Justice
by MisatoKitty
Summary: The final arc of the stories from Truth and Love Ranma, now fighting for the Dark Kingdom, is standing against the Senshi, who find Japan has turned against them! Can they survive? Will Yoshihiro win? And can anyone have a happy ending?
1. Chapter 1

**DISCLAIMER:** Relatively standard stuff. Existing characters are properties of the people who made them up. Mitsuki, and several other characters are mine, and so's the story, hence ownership and copyright of them belongs to me. Contact me at if you want permission to use anything I've written for whatnot purposes.

**WARNING:** This chapter has bad language, adult themes, minor horror, and shameless rip-offs. If this was an Australian site, it would carry an MA/MA15+ rating, which is less than an R, but more than a PG. You have been warned. 

**JUSTICE**

by

Raymond Cooper 

Weight Of The World

**"Five."**

* * *

"This has to go," Ranma pointed at a pile of unruly smashed crates lurking at the field of his vision. "And this. And these." A tarpolin, a bank of deteroriating ancient computers. Monsters scurried to carry out his orders. Something about the new General, dashing in a late-adolescent way in his black suit, made them scamper to obey his orders. Maybe it was the fact he didn't lord his power over them; maybe it was the fact they were more scared of the people watching him from the door to the decrepid battleship painted green.

"He's very busy," Umiko remarked, a little ruffled that Ranma seemed to be stealing the limelight she usually enjoyed from the younger monsters.

"Very," Yoshihiro remarked, but fell quiet again, watching his latest General begin preparations for his plans. What he had outlined to Yoshihiro the night before... breathtaking. Not only did it give a new way to operate, one that wouldn't attract undue attention of the various magical people around Tokyo and the rest of Japan, but it also gave some ideas for what to do once he'd won.

Still, watching Ranma assemble everything he needed was... disturbing. This was a reckless young man, one not given to a lot of thought - on the surface, at least. Ranma Saotome acted on his gut. So what was it that was giving him this drive? What was pushing him like this? When asked the night before, Ranma had shrugged in an embarrassed way, tried to laugh it off, but said being dead changed him - he wasn't human now, and he knew that, and he had to embrace his new heritage. 

Well, reflected Yoshihiro, he hadn't said quite that, but that had been the meaning behind what Ranma said. And while it was at least partly true, it was also in a large part false. But no matter. Ranma was committed to helping, Yoshihiro could see and sense that. The part of Ranma that was now a creature of the Dark Kingdom told him that. And while it wasn't all of Ranma's plan (that much was obvious), for now it would work.

The Master was stronger than his Generals, of this Yoshihiro had no doubt. And Ranma would grow in strength, much as Tokhar and Raijin had.

And, yes, little Boku, sleeping in her cradle on the bridge of his warship. He eyed it. Green. Such a distasteful colour. He'd have to speak to Ayumu about that again; the ship didn't like it. But there was someone up there, painting something else on it while dangling from a sling. No, not a sling, he amended silently, dangling from the arms of the monster Umiko had taken to calling "Rubber-Bando".

Umiko was urging him wordlessly to confront Ranma, and bring the (Yoshihiro suspected) unintentional affront to his power to an end. However, the more Yoshihiro thought about it, the more he realised he was looking forward to what Ranma would manage to do. He had been a friend and ally to the senshi for so long, so even with the power of the Dark Kingdom flowing through his psyche, would he be able to turn against them?

When he'd asked the night before, Ranma had said it was time the senshi proved they could stand on their own two feet, and that it was his feelings for them that drove him to this. And something else, he said. "It's time for all'a you to grow up. Ya can't do that while evenly balanced. You've got no responsibilities except ta keep things the way they are. I wanna change that, make everyone fight for their destinies."

Chaos. Ranma was after chaos. Yoshihiro liked it.

* * *

**"Four."**

* * *

Spring was well and truly in bloom in Tokyo. The snows had melted, even after a last gasp of a sudden week of icy cold temperatures that had frozen leaves budding from dormant trees. But even under the bright spring sun, a haze of heat rising from the cement footpath through the park, it still made Mistuki feel cold. 

To be truthful, it was more likely Mitsuki herself who was making her feel cold. While wrapped in a woolen jersey, warm jeans and wearing a scarf and matching gloves, even in the heat, it was her thoughts that chilled her blood.

She had killed Ranma. He had come to her, and she knew the consequences - if not his head exploding, than the feelings of Ranma's girlfriend - and she had gone ahead with what they had both wanted. Why had she done this? She had no interest in Ranma in those kinds of ways, not really, not anymore. She was attracted to him, sure, but Ranma was... Ranma. As much as Ranma had marked Hotaru as his territory in ways unseen by the naked eye, so Hotaru had marked him in chains and spikes and promise of death.

Just because Hotaru was quiet and smiled a lot when the subject came up didn't mean she'd forgiven nor forgotten what her erstwhile ally had achieved.

It was two weeks later, and as yet no evil plan had been hatched. No Dark Kingdom giant monster rapmages through Tokyo, no assassination attempts on magical girls or boy soldiers, no unlocking of the very gates of Hell in the sky.

At least, no _normal_ evil plan had been hatched. The senshi, like most people of a magical nature, often went unreported in the news, at least in Japan. They were a fact of life, why dwell on what they and other heroes represented? In Japan, they weren't a source of national pride like they were in other nations; no, they were a reminder of the horrible, gory end that could come at any moment from something not related to one or one's actions. They were a stark reminder that at any moment, a demon could possess you and kill your family, or that something steeped in shadows and full of writhing tentacles could be waiting for you in that next alleyway, or that the entire world could be destroyed by some foul lord from another dimension.

Not everyone thought those thoughts all the time, though, Mitsuki had to admit. Mostly, people cheered them, because once the senshi were seen, or any of the other heroes of Japan, the people knew that their chances of survival or that one ultimate panty flash had risen dramatically.

Lately, though...

Since Ranma had died, the news was commenting on the men and women, boys and girls who fought the darkness. There was an undercurrent of xenophobia, paranoia - _they're not like us!_ And it was everywhere. For the first time in history, Japan was openly questioning the need for magical and super-powered heroes, and exhorting the attributes of simply normal humans. It wasn't something Mitsuki liked to think about, and she didn't think people would be so easily swayed, but the change was disturbing.

"It is Yoshihiro," Hotaru announced, from behind Mitsuki, startling her with the accuracy of line of thinking. "You're thinking about the news, right?"

Mitsuki tried not to look as surprised as she felt as the younger woman passed by breezily. "I didn't know you were there," she said, lamely.

Hotaru waved it off, walking a step or two ahead of Mitsuki at all times. She was quiet for a few minutes before speaking again. "With the saving of Tokyo, and our saving of ourselves, we've become a major thorn for him. I think he's overreacting, though. It was always," Hotaru's voice caught for a moment, "Ranma he was more concerned with. Us Senshi... the Dark Kingdom knows how to handle us. That's all they've had to deal with for millions of years. They don't know how to handle a random element like Ranma."

"I suppose this makes things easier for them. And dammit, I had to -"

"No. It merely makes things... harder for them." Hotaru seemed to not want to follow this line of thought, her eyes casting out over the shrubs and trees surrounding them. "It is... not your fault. Ranma is capable of making his own decisions. And I do not know why he has made this one, but I'm sure he sees it as his only course of action."

"It's not fair, Hotaru," Mitsuki said, finally reaching out and grabbing the younger woman's shoulder. "You're being so mature about this. No, not mature, you're freezing your heart. _I killed Ranma._ Just like I killed my last boyfriend. How can you just let that slide?" At least, Mitsuki reflected, she managed to keep her voice flat and level. 

Hotaru was quiet for a few steps, and then stopped, and leaned on some wooden railing looking out over a small pond. Ducks quacked, snacking up on bread thrown by excited children, and now that Mitsuki could see Hotaru's face, she seemed to be enjoying the sun and the birds. "Mitsuki... Ranma's not gone. He's still here. I could get angry... but that would be wrong of me."

"I just screwed your boyfriend! I just screwed him to death!" 

"Yes, I'm aware of that fact. And as disturbing as it was for you to realise you were engaging in necrophilia, so it was for me to see my boyfriend's head splattered all over you and your room." Hotaru bit down on her lower lip, the words having been delivered more archly than she was obviously intending. "No, it would be wrong. Not so long ago, I had the same thing happen to me. I was seduced by the rose-tinted scent of power. Strong, intoxicating. And Ranma was better equipped to handle the sense of attraction... from a man. But... there's you, and there's me. Avatars of powerful planets. Saturn and Nemesis. And to Ranma, we smell as well, the same way."

"You must smell stronger than me, then." 

Hotaru smiled wanly. "Probably. It's that whole 'strongest senshi' deal I have going. But Nemesis always had the power to disrupt the other planets... and it's no doubt the same with you. Ranma... I'm sorry, but Ranma was confused. It wasn't you he thought he was with. He was coming to see me. I'd left him a few minutes earlier, and was waiting. But he'd said he was confused. There was something he said about you. He said you hadn't felt quite right, and it was disturbing him. And he was talking about other things. About a baby. A baby crying." Hotaru's voice trailed off in thought.

"I'm not pregnant," Mitsuki said quickly. "I mean, I went and saw the doctor and got... well... there won't be any chance of me trying to claim he's mine by way of child."

Hotaru sighed. "Not you. Someone else. Something else. Remember, back when this all began -" And then she trailed off again.

"I am sorry, though. For however it happened. I should have said no. I wanted to say no. But -" Now it was Mitsuki's turn to break off. But she wanted to be loved, she completed in her mind.

"It's all right," Hotaru replied, patting Mitsuki on her arm. "Ranma was there for me after I made my mistake, and I didn't think I deserved it. I'll be there for him. And, as bad as it sounds, I think you were just collateral damage. There's more going on here than we know."

* * *

**"Three."**

* * *

"It's not wise to put all our eggs in one basket." 

Umiko's words hissed in Yoshihiro's ears. She was still on about this. Ranma's plans were progressing well, with the battleship in the hangar being stripped down and painted in detail, and the stripped out parts being used for other concerns. Indeed, this 'farm' plan of Ranma's did have promise and it would be interesting to see how far the martial artist would go before turning on Yoshihiro... 

"Master, I do not say this from jealousy..." 

"Perish the thought, Umiko."

"... but he needs to be watched. He needs to have a tighter leash. You need to be seen in control of him."

"And I have just the perfect way to do that." Yoshihiro stood, and gestured at one of his monsters in the corner. "You, come. We have to go see your new General." The monster nodded in a distracted manner, and followed Yoshihiro from his throne room. Umiko's eyebrow arched up. 

"Okay, this I do have to see." With a flick of her tail, she followed.

It took a few minutes to find Ranma, but they everntually did find him. Jacket and shirt off, he was rapid-punching finger holes in sheet metal while monsters behind him bolted the plating together. Ranma noticed Yoshihiro approaching, but didn't stop punching holes until he'd reached the end of the sheet, at which point he grabbed a towel and mopped his brow. "Master," he said easily, with a slight tilt of his head in acknowledgement. 

"Ranma, I'd like you to meet your first lieutenant." Yoshihiro gestured to the girl standing beside him, who held a vacant smile and distant gaze. "Ayumu Kasuga. She's been here longer than you, and knows how to get things done. I am entrusting her to you as a sign of my faith in you."

Ranma eyed Ayumu carefully. "Faith, yeah, I get that."

"Hello :D" Ayumu said cheerfully, yet still managing her blank stare and empty smile.

"Hello," Ranma replied, ducking his head quickly, growing anxious to get back to work. "Master, I expect this all to be finished within a fortnight. Right now, we're reshaping Ho-Masubi into what we need, but it's taking a long time." 

"And the other aspect of your... intriguing plan?" Yoshihiro asked.

"That we haven't started yet," Ranma dropped bluntly. "The other things are takin' an awful long time to get ready."

"You're not stalling for time, are you?" Umiko ask slyly.

"Yes, yeah I am," Ranma replied quickly. "This is a lot harder'n I thought it'd be, and we don't have a lot of technical help to put it all together. The basic plan is still good, but it's taking longer than I first thought."

"Results are what matter," Yoshihiro put his hand up to block further comments from Umiko. After a moment, he returned his attention to Ranma. "But for the time being, we still require energy - life force - to power this place. Are you suggesting -"

"I'm suggestin' nothing." Ranma placed his hands behind the backs of his superiors and pushed them away from his workplace. The sudden change in motion made Umiko blink. "You do what you gotta do. You let me work my idea, so I gotta do the same. It'll work, it'll just take me a while to get it together like I said." He gave a crooked grin. "Trust me, I know what I'm doin'."

Yoshihiro gave a grudging nod, and turned back and headed into the base complex proper. As he and Umiko disappeared back into the tunnels, Ranma swore he could hear Yoshihiro laugh, with what sounded like a muttered, "I _do_ like that boy," as they went. Umiko's angry hiss was a lot more audible. He shrugged, and turned to go back to work, but Ayumu was right in his face, still smiling that blank expression.

"Hello :D" Ayumu said cheerfully. How had she snuck up on him so effectively? He wasn't aware that she'd moved. Fascinating. But first, he had work to do. He stepped around her, and hefted his sheet of metal above his head, only to shift his gaze and find her staring into his eyes again with that blank face.

"Uh... I got some work to do. So we can talk later, right?"

"Okay :)" Within moments, she was gone from sight. Ranma guessed she wouldn't be that easy to get rid of all the time. He went back to work, returning his attention to the shapes of metal in front of him.

* * *

**"Two."**

* * *

Ranma's thoughts had proven correctly. The last week, Ayumu had been at his side, smiling vacantly while her eyes went this way and that. Ranma gave up trying to ascertain what she was looking at; as far as he could tell, it wasn't his work, but he couldn't see anything.

After a week of work, Ranma needed a break. He called up a slipgate and headed into one of Kanagawa's small shopping centres. It was exactly a break, Ranma reflected, he needed items to complete his work. So he found himself nosing through fashion stores, but not finding what he was looking for. He also headed into a fabric retailer's, and upon questioning the owner, found what he was after. 

Finding that out, he sighed, and let his shoulders droop. 

"You found me? Ahhhhhh :("

"You were very hard to miss, Ayumu, standing in the doorway like that." Ranma scratched the back of his head and glanced back at the owner, who was returning from the storeroom with several large rolls of the fabric Ranma had requested. He paid the owner with bills taken from petty cash, and then paused. "Ayumu?"

She turned her head almost completely around to look at him without apparently moving her shoulders. "Yes?"

"Ya better at the whole 'draining life force' than I am, right?"

":D" 

"Okay," Ranma replied, before thumbing over his shoulder at the store owner, who looked startled and confused by the conversation. "We need to test the whole farming thing. I want ya to drain him. But only maybe, say, ten or twenty percent." 

Ayumu gave him a big thumbs-up. "Ooooo-kay!" she announced, before stepping up to the store owner, and before he could say anything, grabbing his hand and putting it to her forehead. "WaaaWEEE! WaaaaWEEE! KAPOW! Stealing your energy, stealing your energy, stealing your energy..."

Ranma slapped his palm to his face. Still, his senses told him the man's life force was indeed being lowered. "Ayumu, you have to be the most... unorthodox monster I've ever met."

Ayumu smiled, genuinely happy at the compliment.

"That's... not somethin' to be proud of," Ranma muttered, but the owner staggered back now, waking up to the shock of what had just happened. 

"Hey!" he started, before Ranma grabbed his paid-for material under one arm, and put Ayumu under the other, and left the store very quickly. Once outside, he treated her to a drink, which she accepted with another genuine smile. He turned his eye around the small shopping area, and saw nothing amiss. He thought he'd know if any senshi turned up, a confrontation with whom at this time not being what he was after, but it still paid to be on the safe side.

"What are you looking at :?"

Ranma brought his attention back to Ayumu. "No-nothing," he stammered, caught off-guard with the quesiton.

"Ahhh..." Ayumu murmured in soft understanding. "You're checking out the girls!"

"Uh no! I got a... I don't need to look at girls."

"Ahhh :D You're looking at the boys?" 

Ranma shook his head, and tried to take command of the situation again. "Were you following me because the Master still doesn't trust me?"

":( Nooooo... I followed you because..." her eyes drifted off to one side. "I followed you because..." her eyes drifted off to the other side, and Ayumu started smiling again. Her eyes turned upwards, and then focussed on something only she could see again as it passed downwards.

"... Ayumu?"

"Yes, Master?" 

"You were saying...?"

"Oooooh... I followed you because you're my Master and I should follow..." Ayumu's voice trailed off again, and she fell into her own little world. Ranma sniffed in annoyance.

And then sniffed again. 

Roses. Very strong on the breeze. He glanced around -

- Hotaru. Hotaru and Mitsuki, of all people. The elder of the two looked uncomfortable as Hotaru led her through the tables in the eating area, and Ranma dodged down behind a planter where he couldn't be seen, but he felt Hotaru twitch, felt her start to glance around with confusion and a troubled sense rippling through her ki. Ranma dampened down his power, dialled everything he had from the Dark Kingdom, Moon Kingdom, and his own physical strengths down as far as he could go, and waited with baited breath to see if Hotaru could still track him. No, apparently not.

"She's sniffing:D" Ayumu said excitedly. "Just like you! But it wasn't me :"

"Wasn't you what?" Ranma asked quietly, concentrating.

"Who farted .o" Ayumu sniffed disprovingly and folded her arms. "I can't even smell anything." Realisation hit. "You can smell ghosts!"

"Uh, no, not a ... a fart," Ranma replied, wondering where Ayumu's head was. "Um... hey... those girls... over there..." 

"The ones who just had friends join them?"

"Yeah, those ones... there's a young one there. I want you to go tell her something for me." Ranma told Ayumu what he wanted to say, and she nodded with a determined expression.

"I shall do this :" Her face grew even more determined. "I must not make this Master look bad. I must not make this Master look bad. I must not..." Her voice grew faint as she headed towards the senshi. A few minutes passed, and she came back, looking depressed. "I must not make this Master look bad," she repeated another time, and then sat quietly.

"... what did you say to her?"

"I was determined not to make you look bad," Ayumu said, sounding determined, "but by the time I reached those people, I had forgotten what you said . And then I played with one girl's hair like she was a horse." She sighed. 

"... forget it. Time ta go." He grabbed the material, and slipgated away again. Another week, another week and they would be ready to go. The ships were nearly ready. The uniforms would be ready soon. Ayumu had proven they could take little pieces of energy and leave the person whole and able to regenerate that missing life force after a few days as he had suspected... this would all work. For the first time, Ranma allowed himself to hope that things would go as he planned it.

There was a crash from behind him.

"Sorry :O"

Then again, perhaps not.

* * *

**"One."**

* * *

Hotaru was watching television with the other senshi, but was not really paying attention. Instead, her thoughts were turned inwards to her... for want of a better word, boyfriend. Her estranged boyfriend. Ranma couldn't be evil. He didn't have it in him to be corrupted so easily. The confidence she had shown Mitsuki was as strong as ever, but he was confusing her even more now. It had been a month now since he had left them all stunned at his funeral. Since he had turned and walked with the enemy, Yoshihiro. Hotaru knew he was scared, and likewise, she knew it was for his friends and family, and that was why he was doing this, why he was acting against form. And she also knew that he had some plan, some method of working against Yoshihiro. It was what he did. If the enemy was stronger, he learned from them, and then used it against them. Perhaps that was why Yoshihiro had always seemed to fear Ranma more than the senshi. The senshi, he knew how to fight. Ranma, being a random variable, was unknown and thus the greatest threat to Yoshihiro's plans.

Surely, if it hadn't been for Ranma's training, the senshi would have been defeated already. If it hadn't been for friends of Ranma's, the senshi would have been trapped a month earlier, in the computer system Yoshihiro had sucked central Tokyo and seven million people into. If it hadn't been for Ranma, they wouldn't have saved Keitaro, or the others. If it hadn't been for Ranma, Hotaru would still be weak and helpless and hating herself for having to continue to rely on others. He had helped the senshi too much, become to close to them for him to throw away that kind of investment.

Maybe that was it. Maybe this was the ultimate cap to his training. If so, they seriously needed a lot more. After Ranma had abandoned the senshi and the Ai Sou, almost completely they had given up on their practising for a week, but they were slowly coming back to it, realising this wasn't some kind of practical joke on Ranma's behalf. Not after he had complimented them so well at his funeral - his betrayal had come as a shock.

But Hotaru had faith in him. That was what love was about, she had realised. Trust. Faith. They were going to fight next time they bumped into each other, but that love that had grown between them, that had led Ranma to go to her room that final night, that would remain eternal.

Love. So exciting and new for the young senshi. She could feel that part of her that was always Saturn give a wry and knowing grin deep inside, but the trust she felt for Ranma was returned there also.

And then there was the message.

A week ago, a weird young woman had walked up to their table while she and Mitsuki were having lunch and had begun rambling about how she was going to conquer the world but save - and then she had started talking about dolphins and how nice it would be to ride one. Then, once Mitsuki agreed with her, she changed the topic again and started talking about a 'yotsuba party van', before returning to her original topic, saying, "The Master wanted me to tell you he was going to kill you now. It's a whole new war." And then she had turned, and drifted back in the other direction. She hadn't seen who the woman met up with, but Hotaru saw her stand still for a moment before leaving in a black slipgate.

Had it been Ranma the woman had been talking about? She thought it was him that she had smelt when she entered the food hall area. She'd smelt him, the same smell she got from Yoshihiro - roses. A strong smell of roses, almost overpowering. And then it had been gone. His ki had disappeared as well, which she didn't realise until it wasn't there anymore. So he had been trying to hide from her - but why? What did the message mean? Was Ranma intending on having their big fight there and then? No, that couldn't be it. If the woman _was _one of Ranma's, then she had to have had things wrong. Maybe she'd had it backwards. He wasn't going to kill her. He wasn't going to fight her. To conquer the world and save - save what? Tokyo? Friends and family? _Everything?_ Hotaru didn't know. She didn't know if she cared to know.

The thinking was starting to make her head hurt. 

Strangely, her heart felt at peace.

She came back to herself, in time to catch the end of one of Yoshihiro's announcements during a commercial break. He'd been running these for the last couple of days, preaching that the everyday man and woman in Tokyo and the rest of Japan was better than they thought. Their sameness, their normalness, which let them get on with life after huge events that should tear the nation apart, was their strength. He played on patriotism and xenophobia at the same time, exhorting that those of a superhuman or magical or technological nature should "butt out" and leave the security of the nation to people who were _normal_. 

"Ha!" Rei snorted. "Usagi, that leaves you out. You're definitely not normal." Usagi threw a cushion back at Rei, which started off a minor but quickly escalating lounge war. With her crappy aim, Usagi quickly found herself on the losing edge of battle as technological capabilities moved up to including the television and stereo remotes.

"People won't be listening to this," Makoto said confidently. "People are smarter than this."

"People will be listening to this," Mitsuki countered quietly, "just because they like being like everyone else. It makes us feel normal. By blaming the ills of society on a small group, they can single out that group and victimise them. Don't tell me you didn't see that at school, not with your height and violent streak." Makoto fell silent.

The broadcast ended, but instead of going back to Daimyo's Creek, a news report flashed up. Jun Yamamoto was hanging out of a helicopter again, yelling into a microphone clutched in one hand because, probably, she thought it made things look more important and dangerous than it really was. Hotaru supposed there had been some car pile-up in the city.

"The scene here is one of chaos and danger! A giant metal beast has appeared in Minato, and is tearing through buildings still closed after Tokyo's reappearance a month ago." The camera angle changed to show an angular machine, shaped like a bird, roaring and blowing windows out for blocks. The senshi didn't bother to look at each other; they were up with transformation wands and out the door, heading for Minato.

The senshi arrived at Minato shortly afterwards, landing in front of the giant metal bird and taking up offensive positions. Before they could act, though, the crowd that they now stood in front of forgot their fear at the bird, and instead began pressing forward towards the senshi.

"Please go back!" Mercury called, worried about the bird stepping forward and taking up the buffer zone the senshi currently had.

"Go away!" someone yelled back in reply.

"You're kind aren't wanted here!" someone else yelled.

Nemesis shivered. "This is what I was afraid of."

Saturn shrugged off the comments. She had more important things to worry about. If this monster was a heavy hitter, as it appeared to be, her physical strength, and that of Nemesis, would be crucial in the battle. The others would provide magical support, and could afford to be distracted for the immediate moment. That said, she had her own distraction. Anxiously, she sniffed the air, peered upwards intently at the robot, to no apparent avail.

Sailor Moon stepped forward, and addressed the mechanoid monster. "Your attack on this wounded heart of the city shows the lack of true feeling a machine is reknowned for! This crime cannot go unavenged! In the name of the name of the moon, I shall punish you!"

The speech sounded good, Sailor Moon sounded as genuinely angry at the beast as any she had faced, but a moment later, a can bounced off her skull from behind. The shock made her start forward a step, before whirling around to find the crowd had swollen with additional people; not only that, but they had begun arming themselves with whatever they had available. Some waved pipes, some waved briefcases, several tattooed people at the back held what looked to be handguns. Sailor Moon sucked in a breath nervously, her eyes opening in panic.

Behind them, the robot took a step forward menacingly...

* * *

In a parallel pocket dimension, Ranma's eyes lit up. He reached up, and hit the intercom switch above his head. "This is it, guys. All systems go."

On a comm screen in front of him, Ayumu smiled happily. "Fully advised and briefed." 

Satoru and Akio also chimed in with a "Fully advised and briefed," and a "FAB, General Ranma sir!" respectively.

Ranma shook his head, and held his breath for a moment. "We're a go, guys. Punch it."

From the nearby starship's bridge, Yoshihiro watched with Umiko at his side. His fingers were steepled in front of his face, as he watched the monitors in front of him show the various newly-made ships surrounding the picked-apart corpse of the Night's Pride. He felt the vibrations from multiple engine start-ups, and then felt the huge gravitational shifts of slipgating vessels as they left their docks for Earth. He sighed, and leaned back in his chair, swivelled around to gaze for a moment at Natsumi, still locked into her chair, head covered in her heavy datalink helmet, and wires and larger cables penetrating her flesh across her body. Eventually, he glanced up at Umiko. "The Thunderbirds are gone. Now it's time to see if Ranma is working against us... or for us."

_SAILOR MOON SAYS:_

Hi all! New chapter of the last arc up. 

Hoping chapter 2 won't take so long, since it's already half-written, but who knows? I'm out of a job atm, so looking for work and trying to get over not having work for the first time in three years... it's difficult. It also means I'm sleeping a lot and not making sense the rest of the time.

This chapter is rather special; it's a good friend's birthday tomorrow, and so this is kind of a birthday gift (it's a dodgy attempt to get out of buying him something - but I'll get him something anyway). He does a lot of my pre-reading, so please everyone wish him a happy birthday and mentally urge him to write himself - he has some fantastic ideas I'm itching to see committed to something readable other than various conversations we've had.

The new arc: it's kind of obvious where things are going. Should be a bit more readable. Going by comments in places here and elsewhere, most people don't seem to like super-subtle foreshadowing, or even normal subtle foreshadowing (or maybe I'm being too subtle for anyone who doesn't know where I'm actually going, in which case this is a really valid point), so I'm still keeping a few things under wraps, which will come out as the story progresses as normal, but trying to be a lot more open with the inner thoughts people are having and plans that are being made, etc. There are a few characters to be introduced to this arc yet, on both sides of the fence, and they will be brought in over the next few chapters.

I think that's about all to say. Thanks for reading, hope you have enjoyed it and will continue to enjoy the series.

Next chapter: Can the Thunderbirds prevail over the mighty Terrorhawks? And what happens when the senshi stop being senshi?


	2. Chapter 2

**DISCLAIMER:** Relatively standard stuff. Existing characters are properties of the people who made them up. Mitsuki, and several other characters are mine, and so's the story, hence ownership and copyright of them belongs to me. Contact me at if you want permission to use anything I've written for whatnot purposes.

**JUSTICE**

by 

Raymond Cooper

Terrorhawks!

The mechanical beast towered above Sailor Moon, and the crowd pressed towards the senshi from behind, waving whatever they had to hand in a threatening manner.

"Why are they fighting us?" Sailor Moon whined, while Mercury and Venus turned from the giant bird-like robot to the crowd behind.

"I think it's the bad press we've had of late," Nemesis commented. "People are just going right against anyone who's not a normal person." 

"But they love Yoshihiro!"

"What do you expect?" Mars replied, "they all think he saved everyone in Tokyo, instead of trying to kill them all. He's championing the cause of the common man. Showing them that everyday people can be superheroes, not just magical people."

"A complete backlash against the fact we weren't here while we were stuck in the System," Mercury added. "It is understandable, there were monster attacks during that time, and no one but the police and Self Defence forces to stop them."

The giant bird machine extended its neck upwards, and crowed loudly, the volume so loud the sound pushed most of the senshi to the ground. Saturn stood her ground, looking up. She seemed to be looking for something, but didn't find what she was looking for. Sailor Moon thought she looked a little dejected, and realised she'd been looking for Ranma. The crippling sound let up, and the other senshi stood up again, Jupiter just in time to avoid being hit by a rock thrown at where she had been lying a moment earlier.

"Hey! What was that for?" she yelled at the crowd.

"Everybody!" Mercury called about the growing clamour from the crowd. "Please! Turn around and go back! Go away before you get hurt!"

"She's threatening us!" someone yelled.

"Get them!" someone else yelled.

"Oh dear," Mercury gulped, before the crowd broke towards them like a storm surge on a flat beach. "Um, Sailor Moon... we might want to be moving from here at this point in time."

The giant robot bird let out another loud crow, but thankfully not as loud as the previous one, and the senshi managed to keep their footing this time. Unfortunately, so did the crowd, and they continued to advance.

"We can't move without endangering these people!" Mercury noted with a worried glance at the shrinking distance between the crowd, the senshi and the robot.

From a distance came a rumble - the sound of tortured engines straining against confinement. Moments later, the crowd stopped as a grey missile streaked overhead. Halfway down the fuselage were a pair of wings that swivelled as the missile banked and turned in a wide circle around the monster, before coming to land horizontally nearby. Another runble, much louder, could be heard in the distance, but from the missile's belly dropped an elevator. A young man in a blue uniform stepped from the lift, eyed the robot, and raised a watch to his mouth to speak into.

The senshi were too far from him to hear what he said, but they did see his glance flick between them and the crowd. At that, Nemesis thought to give a worried glance behind her, only to find that the lead elements of the crowd were now within striking distance. Once held a metal pipe, raised above his head, and brought it crashing down on Nemesis. Although intended for her head, she brought her forearm up to block it. While the pipe bounced off and did no damage, it was the trigger that the crowd needed, and as one they surged forward. 

"Let's go!" Sailor Moon said, before jumping high. The other senshi followed suit, and they alighted on a nearby rooftop, aware that the man in the uniform was still watching them. Without the senshi present in the immediate area, the crowd hesitated, then began to flow backwards, away from the robot which even now started towards them. "What's got into them?" she wondered aloud.

"Fear, mostly," Saturn murmured. "Fear of what is different. It's always been there, but in a more positive aspect, which is what we're used to. We're used to people who stand back and act surprised, impressed but cautious as if we could snap and kill them then and there, but we don't see the people who stand back and hide, wondering what we're going to use our great gifts for."

"And they're these people?" 

"No, these are the people we've always seen, feeling it's okay now to give those feelings vent because everyone else is." 

The robot bird took a step forward towards the crowd, who panicked, broke and fled, streaming around buildings, down streets and alleyways. It crowed again, windows in the area bursting into fragments. Sailor Moon made to step forward, but Saturn's hand was on her shoulder. When she turned to question the younger girl, no explanation became necessary as the source of the second rumble powered overhead.

Painted green, with yellow and red striped highlights, Sailor Moon recognised Yoshihiro's battleship that he had used in his attempt to breach the dimensional lock sealing the Dark Kingdom away from the kingdom of Earth. White lettering in what she recognised (but was still unable to read) as english stated "THUNDERBIRD 2". A wave of heat washed over the women, then the vehicle rumbled to a stop. Moment's later, it lurched forward, and then the brakes were applied again, landing legs extended, and with a muffled crump from the sealed surface underneath the vessel, the middle of the ship dropped to the surface of the parking lot. 

"What the hell?" Nemesis asked of no one in particular. Saturn's eyes narrowed.

The central section was some kind of transport pod, with large garage-style doors in fore and aft. Obviously, the front one opened, because some vehicle drove out, down a ramp onto the ground.

* * *

Ranma struggled with the controls of the vehicle, dubbed 'Firely'. It was a bright orange on the outside, but inside, it was an organic mess of black and neon green. More a near-brainless living creature than vehicle, the Firefly bucked and refused initially to respond to Ranma's attempts at control, until he punched something that was softer than the rest, and after that the vehicle had been more co-operative. At the bottom of the ramp, Ranma took one of his hands off a nerve sack and wiped his forehead; this was harder work than he'd thought it would be originally. A small viewscreen blinked open next to him, showing Ayumu's vacant face.

"General Ranma! The senshi have left :"

"That's good, Ayumu. Tell Satoru to keep watch, though. They'll prob'ly come back." Ranma paused, darkly. "They always come back. An' it'll screw up everything." At least, he reflected silently, they didn't try attacking the TestHawk. He came back to himself, realising Ayumu's gaze had become more vacant than usual, her eyes sliding this way and that. "Tell Akio to circle nearby, and in addition to his... duties... have him keep an eye on the senshi from Thunderbird 3. We need to know if they're coming closer as soon as possible." 

Ayumu saluted in a lazy, distracted way. "Yes, sir, General Ranma :D" She clicked the screen off.

Ranma shook his head, and grabbed the nerve cluster again, threaded his fingers between tendons and nerve endings, and pinched and pulled until the mighty beast surrounding him turned and faced the TestHawk. "Okay, Firefly, now you get to show your stuff. Let's see what you can do." He tweaked the beast, and a huge gout of flame leapt from an oriface below the canopy screen. It baked the TestHawk, who stepped forward under its basic programming, and howled at the vehicle. The Firefly bounced backwards a little, the back wheels hitting the edge of the ramp and sliding up a little bit before it decided it wasn't going to take this kind of abuse without a fight. The flame intensified, and Ranma flinched as the insides of the cockpit grew warmer. The TestHawk skittered forward, and then tried to sidestep the flame, but the stream of fire ran across the robot's body and passed over the seam joining the left wing to the torso. With a terrible sound of sticky tape failing, the wing slowly tore off, at which point the TestHawk toppled over on its right side. 

The screen next to Ranma flickered again, and Ayumu stood there, looking embarrassed. "Whoops."

"... what? What just happened?? Why did the TestHawk's wing fall off?" 

"I ran out of rivets, and General Umiko didn't have any more, so I made do with what I could find around the base." 

"Where did you find that much tape?"

":D In the TV room."

* * *

In the otherdimensional pocket base of Yoshihiro, the transdimensional receiver array that hung on the TV room's wall, linked to the television to allow the monsters there to watch their favourite shows, pulled away from the wall, the blu-tack holding it up no longer able to hold its great weight. Not only did the array crash down and smash into tiny pieces, though, it fell across the only TV working in the base.

Needless to say, the crowd watching "Ukyou's Unlikely Ultimate Challenge" weren't too happy when the show died just before the final round and ritual humiliation of the contestants.

* * *

Ranma removed his hand from his eyes and gave a silent sigh. Nothing more could be done about it at this moment, so he focussed on the job at hand. The TestHawk was regaining its feet, and true to its programming, was unfurling its wing claws from the remaining wing structure. It made a feint towards Thunderbird 1, but the pilot, Satoru, dodged back onto his lift platform, which shot back up into the craft and jetted off with a theatrical blast of smoke. Like all of the Thunderbirds, the missile-like craft relied on advanced technology that had long since relegated such things as thrusters and other forms solid fuel engines to the scrapheap, but for the sakes of those watching, the craft had to at least appear human-built.

In a sense, they were... or at least, they were built by post-humans.

With the smaller ship gone, the TestHawk pivoted faster than Ranma thought it could, swinging its wing claws in low, but Ranma managed to get the Firefly to move and the claws merely scraped through the outer shell of the vehicle. While not a crippling blow, the beast within roared, and it spun, flinging Ranma to one side of the darkened cabin into a damp wall, before letting loose a giant wall of flame towards the robot.

* * *

"We've got to go down there!" Sailor Moon said, watching the Firefly take a hit. She wasn't sure which of the two monster she was wanting to defend, maybe both, maybe neither, but she knew they had to be down there, trying to sort things out before someone got hurt. Even if it was a monster that got hurt, that wasn't something she could live with.

Mercury was already powering through options displayed on the inside of her visor. "If Sailor Moon, Sailor Mars and Sailor Jupiter take on that giant... bird... robot, the rest of us should be able to tackle the armoured ground vehicle and battlecruiser. Sailor Mars, we've seen that fire melt through the outer hull of that robot, so you'll need to melt a large enough hold that Jupiter can fire off a large enough electrical bolt that will shut the robot's core processor down. Sailor Moon, they'll be relying on you to cover them as well as attracting the attention of the robot, so they can -"

"No."

"Pardon?" Mars asked Saturn.

"If you want to take on the robot -" Mercury began, but Saturn interrupted again.

"No." She dropped her glaive to her side, then also let her transformation drop. "No. We should do neither. Not... not like this." 

"Why do you say that?" Nemesis asked.

"Because it is what _he_ would be wanting us to do."

"He's evil now. Or, at the moment," Sailor Moon amended her thoughts quickly, remembering various earlier Dark Kingdom takeovers of the senshi and their allies. "Of course he doesn't want us to interrupt his evil plans. He's not wanting us to interfere. So, logically, we should interfere." Hotaru turned, and started to leave the rooftop. Sailor Moon reached out for her arm. "Hotaru!" 

Hotaru stopped, held fast by the elder woman's hand. "Sailor Moon, trust me on this. If we join in now, we'll look worse to the people of Tokyo. I know this will happen. We need to plan, do something different."

For a long moment, the other senshi held their breath as Hotaru's level gaze held Sailor Moon's concerned eyes. "Do you believe this, with all your heart?" Sailor Moon said, eventually.

Hotaru nodded once, decisively. "I have been thinking about this. About Ranma. He's an enemy now. But some part of him... some small insignificant part... is still our teacher. A student doesn't best their teacher by acting the same as they always have. Ranma, the Dark General under Yoshihiro, has won this round. We can win the next, by meeting him on his new playing field, where we can make him as unsure of the outcome as we are."

"Then... we shall go." Sailor Moon's hand dropped. She sounded flat and hollow, as if giving up this once invalidated everything she ever believed in. And, Hotaru reflected, it probably did. She didn't back down, she didn't give up, she _fought_, and that was why powerhouses such as Saturn and Nemesis and Jupiter, and Neptune and Uranus and Pluto, and Mercury, Mars and Venus had all bended knee to the house of Serenity. Singly, they were strong. Together, they were unstoppable. Bonded and tempered by the love and guidence of the White Moon, they were unbeatable.

But... some battles could lose one the war. That was what Saturn had seen. Hated by those they were to protect. Not a reason to stop defending them, but perhaps that defence could be better performed in another way. Sailor Moon had to see that. Not all battles could be complete victories. She knew that, as well, Hotaru knew. She'd lost friends, she'd lost her lover, but through it all, Sailor Moon had won, and in the end, there had been happy endings. The senshi had been reborn when time turned backwards. Mamoru had survived. Her future child had been rescued. Ranma had come back to life.

The victories brought their own pain. It was a pain she was willing to accept, if that meant happy outcomes for others. Sailor Moon's love for others was boundless.

It was also her major weakness. It was her personal blindspot. She believed in the inherent goodness of others, in the justness of her cause, in the rightness of her feelings. Usually, this was not a problem. But, by someone who knew that, it could be used against her. Ranma couldn't expect to win, not without having killed them all at his funeral, and yet he wasn't going to give ground. He was going to use whatever weapons he had to fight against them, like he always had against the Dark Kingdom, against his opponents in Nerima, against any of the troubles he had come his way. Like Sailor Moon, victory for Ranma was absolute. There was never any doubt in his mind he could triumph over anything. _If only he had more training, if only he studied this new technique, if only he could move that little bit faster, if only he could trick his way through something._ That was Ranma. But unlike Sailor Moon, Ranma knew not every battle could be won, and some battlefields he must conceed. It was the end result that mattered.

Two people, to whom losing was unthinkable, to whom their rightness was assured. Sailor Moon looked to the far future, the formation of Crystal Tokyo and the new Silver Millennium. Ranma looked to the immediate future, where his safety, and that of his family and friends, was assured. Beyond that, he would take it as it came.

Hotaru was sure he was trying to teach them something new: to look at the present differently. She could be wrong, but she was hoping desperately she was right.

She also knew, deep in her heart, Sailor Moon would win, as she always did. And so would Ranma, as he always did. But while Sailor Moon's goals were as transparent as always, Ranma's goals were... a little different. And unknown.

Strangely, though, it didn't scare her. He didn't scare her. Not Saturn; Saturn wouldn't care. But Hotaru... felt she had nothing to fear. Ranma, in any incarnation, had yet to attack her directly. The closest he'd come was when she had been swamped by Yoshihiro's power, become entranced by his strength and scent, and he'd physically fought with her to have enough time to talk her down. This didn't feel like then, not completely, but she was sure the meaning was the same - his silence, his defection, it was a message. 

It was starting to become clear to her. As Hotaru left the rooftop, the senshi behind her dropped their transformations and followed, grumbling except for Mitsuki, who was strangely silent.

* * *

"Akio reports the senshi have left the building :O" 

The brief blossom of joy Ranma felt was only shown by the savage grin he allowed himself as he twisted the Firefly around and forced it to breathe another gout of flame. Turning up the intensity, raking the flame over the TestHawk in a certain specific series of directions activated the giant mechanical bird's destruct sequence, and a hip joint detonated in a blaze of pyrotechnics.

A second complicated sweep, and the remaining wing separated from the body. TestHawk roared, the force of the roar pushing Firefly backwards, but the monster managed to strain against the force and regain it's original position. In the pause between roars, Ranma directed Firefly to fire full strength on the TestHawk's head. 

Another explosion. The head came apart along predetermined lines, pyrotechnic charges exploding from within to create showers of sparks and a blanket of smoke. For a moment, the mighty beast remained upright; then it toppled over onto it's back, and the threat was gone.

Ranma slumped back into his harness and breathed a sigh of relief. For a moment, he had thought his plan might not work. The confidence he projected wasn't felt as deep as he made it seem. Something new had to be done, and he was doing it. He'd seen the way in the System, and so had Kaname. She had known what was coming, and had warned him, had shown him how the future would turn out. A dreary mess, just waiting for the end. There had to be a way to stop that from happening, fight the death of life from the inside out. But... there was so much happening. So much to happen. This Crystal Tokyo thing was scary. To Ranma, it still seemed like there was no choice in the matter, but Kaname had assured him there was, it was just a choice that was inconceivable by humans at their present level of development, and humans needed more to happen to them to change. 

Perhaps he should have told the senshi. At least Hotaru. She would have understood. No doubt Usagi would have as well, but the others might not have seen it that way. Usagi would still be working towards the building of Crystal Tokyo now, while she felt she was on a roll with the rescue of the people from the System, but in reality, she'd be forcing that future on everyone if she tried going about it now. And Ranma guessed that laying the groundwork for that future now was something that she wouldn't have been happy delaying. Besides... besides, there was more at stake than Crystal Tokyo.

The premonitions he'd had while in the System came back to him again. 

There was something wrong with Crystal Tokyo. It wasn't just the choice, but the bleakness of life outside the barriers of the city. The frozen world, the declining humanity. It wasn't right. Maybe that was why he was determined not to let Usagi kick off Crystal Tokyo now. But there was still the other vision.

While in the System, when Nabiki had shown Kaname how to fight outside the box, Ranma had momentarily broken through Kaname's subconscious and spoken with words influenced by the computing power behind the scenes. He hadn't known what they were or what they meant, but Natsumi had willed it, and as much as Ranma had absorbed from the System, Natsumi was still the undisputed god of the cyber-realm. She had given him words that hadn't made much sense until he was at the decision point, when Kaname had him on his magical whirlwind tour of time and space.

He wouldn't be with the senshi. He would not stand beside them. And a false idol would have risen. Ranma didn't think it was him, but after the Crystal Tokyo debacle Yoshihiro had almost pulled off a month earlier, he thought it might be him. The false idol who would give hope to millions. And already yes, he was making inroads in that area. Public perception of him was of some reclusive rich billionaire who had saved Tokyo and some seven million loved ones. The reality of the moment had been glossed over. His wonderful, masterful speech had played over and over on televisions worldwide, and while no one really knew where he lived, Yoshihiro was worshipped as one of the select few who were in the elite global pantheon of movers and shakers.

But there were also to be tears of an infant.

That took some more thinking. Ranma thought it was metaphorical, though. Almost verse. A temper tantrum thrown by the loser or something. One final burst of incredible violence to end things, and then all would be silent. That was, if things worked out. Ranma didn't exactly believe in destiny; otherwise he wouldn't be fighting so hard against it now. Having seen the future - only one possible future, he reminded himself - he felt it only right to push against it himself and make things -

What? Better? He could only hope. He couldn't know for sure, and that also worried him. In trying to make things better for all, he could screw things even even worse. And was it arrogance?

But the thing that really worried him... Kaname had been pushing him. She'd shown him what was happening to his friends and family while he was dead, and she showed him things that Yoshihiro was saying, agonising to himself over his own decisions and his own future, and she showed him how things would end up if they continued as they were - but had she merely been manipulating his own thoughts and fears into doing what she wanted?

No, Ranma shook his head, Firefly bucking under his fingers as he reversed the monstrous vehicle back into its pod, he had to believe that whatever Kaname had been wanting him to do, whatever she had been silently urging for him to accomplish, it had to be for the best for everyone. Regardless of whether she really was a guardian angel or a goddess or whatever, she had only wanted the best for everyone while she existed in the System, and had freely given up her own life to help reach that goal. Ranma shuddered; that mental image of her dropping was still raw. Not being able to save something that had been part of his mind... it hurt him as much as if Kaname had been Akane. Or Hotaru. And despite their differences, Ranma still loved both fiercely.

So. Kaname was right to push the buttons she had. Yoshihiro was aimless, and liable to cause more problems than not if not given some form of direction. Ranma could give the direction, but only if focussed and aligned with Yoshihiro. And that meant committing to what the senshi considered to be evil. That meant Ranma had to either discard his conscience and work as that aspect of his personality wanted him to act - without regard for consequences - or he had to find a way to work within those guidelines that meant he did the job he was supposed to. He had to drain the life force of normal humans, and fight the senshi, fight to restore the Dark Kingdom to the primary plane of existance.

Power wasn't evil; it was what one did with power. This was skirting close to the line, if not jumping wholly across it.

The magical fights and martial arts fights, they were not the way of the future. The way things were going, people needed big, bright demonstrations of the power and skill of those around them. And as Japanese society was becoming more and more insular in recent years, and especially with the threats growing from within its own borders from monsters, psychics, mages and alien plants, the only way to fight was to be human. Exemplary examples of humanity. Defenders of truth and justice, staunch opponants to those who would do the state and the people harm.

Hence, International Rescue.

There would be a few high profile international cases, of course, that wouldn't be farmed for energy, they would be farmed for PR purposes, but most of the rescues would be here in Japan, where Yoshihiro's otherdimensional base occupied much the same spacial position as the Imperial Palace in Tokyo and energy could much easier be siphoned to the base. The international flavour would make people cheer human ingenuity and spirit, making the role of the magical and otherworldly much more difficult due to shifting loyalties in the people they were intending to save and protect.

Ranma sighed. That was always going to be the hardest bit. He would have to keep his face from cameras. If he was seen, he would be recognised - too many people outside the senshi knew his face as a rival, and would flock to Tokyo and cause problems. Not just for Ranma, no, but also for themselves. The senshi would keep his involvement relatively quiet, but those in Nerima might not.

In the case of Ryoga, once he stumbled across Ranma, it would all be on. Kuno at least seemed to be fairly stable these days. Still given to melodrama, of course, but he seemed quiet. Perhaps his time with Hotaru had helped.

Firefly snuggled back into its support cradle, and Thunderbird 2 lowered itself down again even as the pod's doors slid up into the closed position. Once the pod had been locked back into position, the craft lifted off, and Ranma climbed out of the hot cabin, and made his way to the bare-bones flight deck of the main ship.

"Everythin' going all right?" Ranma asked Ayumu.

She smiled. "Everything is going A-OK D"

"How... uh... how did Akio get on?"

Ayumu's head tilted to the side. So, alarmingly, did Thunderbird 2. Ranma steadied himself on a console. "Akio says the power transfer system worked perfectly." 

"That's... that's good... Ayumu, please, for the love of god, look where you're flying!"

* * *

Hotaru watched the green ship right itself again moments before the lowered wingtip would have hit an office building, and then lowered her eyes back to the grass beneath her. The others were sitting around her, wanting to voice their questions, but for the moment staying silent. She wasn't sure herself yet just how to explain it to the others any better than she had on the rooftop.

In the end, she decided not to explain. She couldn't. Whatever Ranma was doing, for the moment they had to act like he was the major threat to their existance. He knew them. He _knew_ them, in all the ways their enemies had not in the past. He had been inside their barriers, knew what made them tick, how to hurt them and how to minimise their involvement in his plans. The other senshi would be thinking this; she could see it on Rei's face, and Makoto's, and Minako's. Mitsuki was... troubled, but not by external events, apparently. She hesitated, staring into the distance, before removing her medication from a pocket, shook two pills out, and swallowed them with no further hesitation. Not once did she look at the pill bottle. Ami stayed seated, quiet, looking at the grass.

While the others looked troubled, Usgai merely gazed at Hotaru with as-yet unspoken concern. After a few moments of silence, Usagi shifted to her feet, and smiled brightly. "C'mon everyone! Instead of sitting here, let's go have some ice cream! C'mon, Rei, c'mon, Makoto..." Usagi began hauling people to their feet and pushing them. Hotaru required no urging. The subject was rested for the moment; it would not stay so forever. For this small reprieve, she was grateful.

And indeed, late that evening Usagi joined Hotaru on the rooftop, overlooking the front yard of the Ai Sou. She had trouble getting up the ladder and crossing the shingles; when she sat, Hotaru found that had been due to the two cans of soft drink she held in her hands. Usagi handed one to her with a slight smile.

"I'm not as dumb as I look," Usagi said.

"Sometimes you can be," Hotaru smiled back.

"But not this time." 

"No."

"Do you miss your parents?" 

"Yes. Dad... and Michiru and Haruka as well..." 

"Setsuna didn't have enough time to tell us what was happening before she stopped by; maybe there was trouble. We should -"

Hotaru's ghost of a smile halted Usagi's words. "Thanks for being considerate. But they are... safe. You would know if they weren't, and so would I." She touched a hand to her heart. "Here; they're all very special to me. And I would know if something had happened, at least as much as you."

Usagi nodded. "So, are you ready to talk about today now?" 

Hotaru shook her head. "It's not something I can explain. Ranma... Ranma is now evil. We have to treat him like that. That's what he's wanting us to do. But we can't fight him like we normally would. We need something else. We need a new way of fighting."

"The martial arts training -" 

"Maybe. But he's better than us, and they're using vehicles, and there's new monsters as well. Robot monsters." 

"Badly-built robot monsters. Looks like something out of a sentai show," Usagi commented dryly, before she noticed the surprised look on Hotaru's face, just moments before the younger girl grabbed her face with a hand on each cheek, pulled her close and kissed her.

"That's it!"

"That's what?" Usagi called, but Hotaru was already gone.

Hotaru ran through the house, but stopped to breathe before entering the kitchen. As expected, Ami was there, tapping away on her laptop with a slight smile on her face. Hotaru figured she was probably talking online with Keitaro; they hadn't really had a chance to catch up since the senshi had busted out of the System a month earlier and Hotaru guessed they were making up for it now. But she didn't have time to waste on niceties.

"Ami," she interupted briskly with excitement colouring her pale cheeks, "if that's Keitaro, can you do me a favour?"

"Yes...?" Ami replied, dubiously.

"Good. Ask him..."

* * *

When Ranma arrived, Yoshihiro's throne room was quiet, for a change with satisfaction instead of dread. Kneeling before the throne was a mighty demon of some kind, with raven-like wings of the purest black and a beaked head. It rose when bade by the Master and handed him a plain brown folder with a handwritten label stuck to the front. "Thank you, mighty lord, for the audience. I do hope the information is of some use for you. It would really be a thorn removed from both our sides and would benefit to all."

"That is as it should be," Yoshihiro agreed. Umiko caught sight of Ranma in the doorway, and her eyes narrowed. Ranma was extremely aware she didn't like him, and wasn't surprised when she left Yoshihiro's side and made her way over to him, slinking like the cat-thing she was. At least for a change, she looked human. The fur, the cat ears, the slashing claws and the tail were a bit much for Ranma's self-control.

"Your audience was set for later." 

"We finished maintenance earlier than we thought," Ranma replied. "I thought I'd come see if the Master had the time free to see me now instead of waitin' any longer."

Umiko hissed. "Have a care, _General_," she spat, putting as much venom into the word as she could. "To see the Master, you must still go through me. And Rozen is to see him first." 

"Rozen?" Ranma started. "What's the Master need the assassin for?"

"What else?" Umiko giggled delightfully at the innocent naivety. "Assassinating people."

Ranma felt dumb. "Oh." Beyond Umiko, the demon flared and slipped sideways into whatever plane it had come from. Yoshihiro glanced up and his blue eyes met Ranma's.

"Umiko," Yoshihiro's voice demanded instant attention. "Has Rozen arrived yet?"

"No, Master. We're expecting him in the next few minutes."

"Good. Send Ranma in. We won't be long." With a glower and ill-grace, Umiko left Ranma pass into the throne room. He knelt at the base of the throne's dias, and lowered his eyes before Yoshihiro's words had Ranma stand. "The report I had from Ayumu was positive."

"Yes," Ranma replied honestly. "We didn't take quite as much life force as we expected, but some work needs ta be done on the systems we're using before we can fine-tune everything well enough to get exact amounts. But the mission went well, yeah."

"That's good," Yoshihiro mused, starting to stroke his chin. "I've just had... some most interesting information. As you just saw, a demon plane contacted me with a view to sharing intelligence. As a goodwill gesture, they provided knowledge of a student at a private academy here in Japan who is working to avoid a coming catastrophe." 

"A what? How? Is she psychic?"

"I do not believe so; instead, I understand she is from the farfuture, and has returned here to wake people to the danger about to explode under their noses. I believe this disaster she is working against is our conquest of the world. However, I cannot say for certain. So. We will need to take steps to neutralise this person immediately." 

Ranma fell silent in thought, wondering if 'far future' meant Crystal Tokyo, or beyond? And then started considering the possibility that it may have been that particular future this student may have travelled back to stop. Did that mean she was an ally Ranma could recruit as a lieutenant? Someone capable enough to pull his plan off? But before any brilliant plans came to mind, Umiko stepped in. "Master, I have an idea. And it would mean all her friends in her class would also not be able to cause trouble."

"Then by all means, Umiko, let's hear what idea you have for this class," Yoshihiro frowned and checked the folder the demon had given him, "3-A at Mahora Academy..."

_SAILOR MOON SAYS:_

Not a year! (This seriously is cause for celebration and also cringing, yes)

Also, since last chapter, I now have a job (but don't start for another week). My pre-reader is also on holiday, I hope he's enjoying himself greatly (and not buying me birthday presents, remember?) and will get back soon. Really soon. 

Ahhh. And Star Wars miniatures have released their starship battles game yesterday. I am so broke; I spent about $200+ on boxes of the stuff yesterday just so I could get a Star Destroyer. Also got a Venator SD and Interdictor and a fleet of Nebulon-B frigates, so really happy.

Not helping with the writing notes, though ;) This chapter obviously has a lot more of the inner thoughts as I said last time. Ranma's walking a fine line, Hotaru's almost an accomplice until she figures out where she stands. It's been a lot of fun 

Next time: (god I wish I could play an electric guitar riff here) we find out what Hotaru is asking from the Hinata Sou crowd. And introducing the master assassin Rozen and his seven _deadly_ daughters!


	3. Chapter 3

**DISCLAIMER:** Relatively standard stuff. Existing characters are properties of the people who made them up. Mitsuki, and several other characters are mine, and so's the story, hence ownership and copyright of them belongs to me. Contact me at my standard email address if you want permission to use anything I've written for whatever purposes.

Justice

By

Raymond Cooper  
Picking The Kids Up From School

It took a week for Umiko's plan to be put into action. Ranma found he was kept on the outside of the planning, but he knew that Yoshihiro was making a great deal of calls to television current affairs programmes, appearing in interviews and generally raising a wave of paranoia in the general public against the unusual, the alien, the magical. But instead of being targeted this time at the various magical girls and mystical knights that defended cities such as Tokyo from evil predations, Yoshihiro appeared to be focussing more on the fact the vast majority of these people were young, either kids or teenagers. Not very old, definitely not adults. And the wave of paranoia was being kept in check with the direction of thought planted at the same time that that perhaps school kids weren't being as disciplined as well as they should.

Why was this? Yoshihiro's plants had ideas on that. It was because they were disrespectful and no one would call them on it. There was no threat to them. No danger that made them fall into line. Children were the battlefield of the present society, the soldiers and commanders, and all because they were becoming unruly.

No mention was made, Ranma noted, of the parents responsibility for this attitude, of the lack of discipline used in Japanese homes - the blame was being laid firmly at the feet of the students.

Beyond this, however, Ranma didn't really have a lot of time to notice current events. The base's television was still out of order, and the only place to catch any programming was on the bridge of the Night's Pride with Natsumi. While most of Yoshihiro's troops found the girl forcibly hooked into the ship's computer somewhat creepy, Ranma often sat with her and chatted amiably about the ins and outs of his day. And while she never responded physically, Ranma would often find the screens around him would switch on to real world programmes. Some of those were news shows, or recaps of earlier interviews, which was where he had found out the little he knew about Yoshihiro's plans.

On the seventh day, Umiko was ready, and her plan was launched.

Negi Springfield waited a little impatiently to be underway. The train was filling up with the various students of 3A, and they were about to leave Kyoto just as soon as the last of the students were onboard. He gave the stationmaster a nervous glance, knowing that shortly the train would be leaving anyway.

Speaking of the stationmaster, he kept shooting Negi and his students filthy looks. Negi wondered what was up with that, but his adventures over the last few days, saving Konoka from the rogue mages led by Chigusa, had stopped him from seeing anything in the news. But Nitta hadn't made any comments before they had left the hotel that morning, so Negi supposed he was just someone who didn't like kids very much.

He stepped away from the train for a few moments, waiting for the last few students – Evangeline and Chachamaru seemed to be taking forever, for example.

While he waited, Negi became aware of something very wrong behind him. He started to turn, but the explosion from the train carriage threw him away, a quick incanted "Cantus Bellax!" protecting him from sudden impact with the station's support pillars. Still, the pillar cracked and groaned, and moments later, Negi was up with the stationmaster, running for the flaming ruin of the train carriage with 3A inside.

Once inside, it was evident that the damage was mostly to the train itself. The students, while dazed and a little scorched, were mostly fine, Negi was relieved to find. The stationmaster was apoplectic, though, to find that the source of the explosion was traced back to one of the student's bags: Chao Lingshen.

She looked embarrassed. "Did I do that?" She asked cheerfully, before Negi managed to push her out of the way of the stationmaster's wrath. Nitta also didn't look very happy, with his arms crossed and face blackened.

"Kids today, such an uncontrollable lot," he muttered, before turning away to make a phone call.

After Negi had received a very stern talking to from the stationmaster about students bringing explosives on a train, and Chao's protestations she had no explosives in that bag – protests that mostly went ignored when Chachamaru recalled another such situation, and Hakase added several more such situations – Nitta announced he'd found transport on a private bus line.

Once it was determined that the police would report any findings to Mahora Academy, Negi dutifully loaded his students into the now-arrived bus, and began the drive back to Mahora.

To be fair, it wasn't Negi's fault he fell asleep. Everybody on the bus did when they were gassed.

Outwardly, Hotaru sat calmly and patiently, channelling Saturn and projecting authority and power and arrogance. The assumption her request was an order that would be followed out. Of course, truth be told, Keitaro was a nice guy, and no doubt would try to act as she wanted. But inwardly, Hotaru was nervous and scared. There was, after all, the chance that Keitaro would say no, or be unable to convince Kaolla Su to act as she wanted.

Keitaro came back with a tea set, placed the cups down on the switched-off kotatsu and poured Hotaru a cup of tea. Behind her, Hotaru could hear the other denizens of the dorm gathered behind the thin walls, listening and giggling.

Well, apart from Narusegawa. She was watching TV in the corner, doing her best to not appear curious, but the fact that even with her back turned to Hotaru and Keitaro, she was leaning in their direction to better listen. Hotaru sighed inside. This was nice; this was like her own family at the Ai Sou, except... Keitaro had turned good again after turning evil. Ranma had yet to do that, she reflected, or maybe Hotaru was missing something and was still good and trying something else. Keitaro handed Naru a cup of tea, and then he sat down with Hotaru.

"What's on your mind?"

"As I asked Ami to pass on, I have a big request."

"Yeah. It was pretty big. Mind telling me what's going on?"

Hotaru nodded. "Of course. The enemy, Yoshihiro, has started using spaceships and giant aircraft to fight giant monsters that are turning up in Tokyo. There was that giant hawk-thing make of metal and sticky tape last week, and then that robotic caterpillar with wings two days ago. It seems the Dark Kingdom is making a different play. It... it has Ranma written all over it."

"It seems like some sentai show at the moment on television," Keitaro agreed. "And so you're also wanting to do the sentai thing?"

Hotaru stared. She hadn't thought her request would have been that obvious. "Yes," she replied, slowly. "I was hoping Kaolla Su could handle the giant machinery. I remember what she did when we were at Furinken again, and I think she would be perfect for designing giant robots."

Keitaro looked at the closed door calmly, and after a moment of thought, raised his voice slightly and asked, "Would you mind, Kaolla? It sounds like something you'd be interested in."

The door burst open, and Hotaru could hear Narusegawa's eyes roll up in her head even with her back turned, as the other girls fell into the room. At least Shinobu had the decency to look embarrassed, blushing and staring at the ground, while Kitsune wore an interested smirk. Kaolla was standing up and looking excited. "You bet! I'll make giant turtles like you wouldn't believe! I've –"

"About the giant turtles," Hotaru interjected softly. "I was hoping for something else."

"Like what? What other animals are there?" Kaolla asked, curious now.

"I was thinking an elephant, a tiger, an eagle, a rhino and a... a kangaroo," Hotaru said.

Kaolla thought about it for half a minute before nodding and heading back out of the door. Shinobu trailed behind after giving a bow and an embarrassed "Sorry sempai," to Keitaro. Motoko, now certain that there was to be no bloodshed, clicked her sword back into its sheath from where she'd had it ready, and turned away.

Keitaro smiled as most of the girls disappeared, although Kitsune joined Narusegawa at the television in the corner. "How have things been?"

"With Ranma?"

"Yes. Ami said things had been... difficult."

Hotaru nodded. "Yes, they have."

Naru got up from the television then, walked over to Hotaru and dropped down beside her, wrapping her arms around the younger girl. "He'll be fine. He'll be back."

Hotaru nodded again, blinking away sudden tears. "I know. It doesn't make it easier, though. I have to believe he knows what he's doing and that he has an idea. A plan. I don't know what it is, though. I don't know..."

_And that's what hurts, _Hotaru finished silently in her head.

At that moment, a world away, Ranma pondered over a notepad. Absently, he tapped a pen on the surface, in no particular rhythm, while he pondered the sense of what he had done. Behind him sat Natsumi, ever-present on the ransacked bridge wired into the control systems and ships computer. Forever locked into her own imaginary world, she seemed to give better company than most of the monsters here.

Still, the ideas wouldn't come.

He needed a new Terrorhawk design, and ultimately needed to field it in the next two days, but the ideas refused to come. Why had he limited himself with the bird of prey motif? The caterpillar with wings that he privately named the Overlander had been a stretch, but it had been easy to throw together.

Ranma sighed, and glanced at Natsumi. "What do you think? What would be a good giant robot design?"

Silence. Of course, what did he expect from a girl locked inside her own head? He patted her knee as he stood. "Take care, Baku." Something lit him from behind, and Ranma turned to see what it was: a monitor had lit up, and for the briefest moment caught sight of a triangular affair of ribbed scaffolding. Wow, he reflected. The screen winked off a moment later, and Ranma turned back to find Ayumu standing directly in front of him, her nose about an inch from his chest.

"Master, we need your ideas if we are to get the next Terrorhawk ready :-"

"Okay, I'm coming, Ayumu. Tell the others I'll be down with an idea in five minutes and that we're to work extra hard."

Ayumu nodded with a surprisingly perky, "Yes, Master!" before she folded her arms in front of her and blinked out in a slipgate.

She was still taking some getting-used to.

Two days later, the skies above Roppongi were split by a deafening howl, a tortured scream of souls unholy and high performance jet engines. People looked up to see another metal monstrosity pass overhead, a flying wing with an underslung body, a short snapping bird-shaped head on the very front. Without delay, it twisted in the air, and dove towards the ground, firing energy weapons that spluttered along the ground, herding people into central areas.

Discretely, Ranma's troops finished installing the final wave receivers in buildings overlooking these areas, ready to absorb life force directly from the population gathering below in fear of the new Terrorhawk.

Within minutes, a local television station had a news crew on the scene, mixed in with the panicking crowd to get some reaction shots. The cameraman ducked as the Terrorhawk swooped overhead, but kept the camera trained on the reporter.

"You can see there is little property damage yet," the reported spoke directly into her microphone, "and no loss of life is apparent. This may change shortly. However, the question everyone is asking now is: where is International Rescue?"

As if on demand, Thunderbird 2 lumbered into view from the east, accompanied by Thunderbirds 1 and 3 in flanking positions. Thunderbird 1 immediately went into diversionary tactics, spinning around the giant flying wing, but the Terrorhawk matched it move for move. It had the desired effect of removing the beast's attention from the people on the ground, though, and the crowd yelled their approval.

Thunderbird 2 in the meantime powered in for a landing, legs extended. The massive ship crunched down in a park, the feet sinking slightly into the ground. Once the crew were sure that no one was still standing under the vessel, the interior bay pod was lowered.

As the pod doors opened, Ranma felt somewhat embarrassed. He'd managed to design his new Terrorhawk, the HawkWing, but had been completely unable to think of a cool way to dispose of it. So he'd had his engineering team through something together from what was left, and what resulted was this... the master elevator car.

It was a small 4-wheeled vehicle that zipped out of the pod, with a flat back on hydraulic lifts. It lifted up on two wheels as Ranma negotiated a corner, and he sighed internally; obviously no one had listened to him when he said the base had to be heavier, with the great weight of the elevator pad on the top of the vehicle. But this was what he had to work with...

"Akio! Move in and attack! Make it look interesting," Ranma spoke into his headset while making another, tighter, corner.

"Fully advised and briefed," Akio nodded verbally.

"Satoru, tighten up on the Wing. Your part of the operation is to commence in thirty seconds."

"Roger," Satoru replied briefly, before sighing audibly over the channel and correcting himself, "FAB, Ranma."

Thunderbird 3 strafed the HawkWing before pulling back. Satoru's Thunderbird 1 circled out wide, charging its engines and flexing wing and tail vanes. While Ranma kept one eye on the other two ships, he fingered the remote control systems for the other elevator cars, now emerging from Thunderbird 2's pod. They took up flanking positions behind him, as programmed, while Ranma counted down in his head.

After the thirty second wait, he saw small puffs of smoke as the explosive bolts holding the HawkWing together blew apart, and the TerrorHawk split into two separately mobile vehicles – the upper wing section's central jet turbine continued operating, although slowing its cycles slightly to account for the loss of mass, the Wing continued on a straight line forward, while the lower underslung body, the Talon, dipped slightly before its own internal engines kick-started and burned brightly into life. As planned, Akio's attack run put him in the firing line of the Talon, while Satoru's circling had placed him in an excellent position to make a run on the Wing from behind.

Ranma trigger the go-code for the twin remote-controlled elevator cars, and they zoomed off down the flight path of the Wing, while Ranma turned and followed the Talon as it blasted at Thunderbird 3. The damage caused was negligible, but Thunderbird 3 started spewing smoke. Akio turned the Thunderbird in the other way, and the ship wobbled – just as the Talon zipped underneath it.

One of Thunderbird 3's engine pods smashed into the side of the Talon was it passed by, crunching into delicate mechanics and sending the machine ground ward. The master elevator car made it underneath just before the Talon dug deep into the ground, and the TerrorHawk bounced on the car's elevator tray before being captured and held by strong electromagnets.

Up above, Satoru was having similar success with the Wing. Two quick bursts of tracking gunfire later, and the Wing was holed badly. While it wasn't planned, the engine's blade shattered with one of the strikes, and the pieces spun back into the engine itself, shredding the machinery and exploding the device. The Wing began dropping for the ground at an alarming rate, and not where planned.

"Damn!" Ranma yelled, and grabbed at the controls for the other two elevator cars while decoupling from the Talon and racing to get under the falling Wing. He wrestled with the other cars, quickly judging the falling speed of the other piece of the TerrorHawk, and managed to get the cars underneath.

He just made it, but the cars bounced heavily and hydraulics complained with wrenching screams of tortured metal as the heavy Wing impacted onto the cars. The Wing was down, but these cars didn't have electromagnets, and to keep the Wing on top, the cars also had to move forward. At the moment, there was no issue, but there were buildings all around on either side and the cars were quickly approaching a building at a kink in the road they would not be able to dodge. He started slowing them down, but it looked like nothing would work, until one of the cars failed.

Spectacularly, one of the down-sloped ends of the Wing dug into the ground as the remote-controlled elevator car spun out of control and smashed into a low wall and bounced further into a tree moments before bursting into flames.

Ranma didn't spare it a glance, focussed as he was on still slowing the three remaining vehicles as he was about now keeping control of the vehicles with only two unbalanced sets of wheels on the ground and a wingtip that was threatening to drag the whole conglomeration off the roads and into heavily populated buildings.

Something had to give.

Something did. The second remote control elevator car suffered a blow-out, one of its front tyres exploding in a resounding BANG before the car skidded first towards Ranma's master elevator car and then off to the right and into another tree before exploding. That dropped the second wingtip down into the road surface, which crashed hard and slowed the caused the vehicles to come to screaming halt.

Shakily, looking forward and seeing the buildings ahead of him were barely outside his cockpit canopy, Ranma paused a few moments before returning a child's cheery wave. Inside the building opposite his face, the child's mother fainted. Ranma glanced to the side now to confirm the readings from a series of gauges – good, good, the energy levels taken from this farming attempt were superior to the first mission's gather, and would go a long way for Yoshihiro.

"General :D" Ayumu's voice echoed through the car.

"Ayumu," Ranma replied, surprised at how weary he sounded. But then, he reflected, he hadn't exactly been sleeping much lately, with all the work he needed to be doing. It was starting to get to him.

"The Master asks for us to return. It's nearly time! XD"

"Time?" Ranma was dumbfounded. No one had gathered yet enough energy to be able to unlock the seal placed on the Dark Kingdom by Queen Serenity millennia ago; that was something Ranma knew for certain. There was a lot of time yet... a lot of time. "Time for what?"

"Do you think we have time to stop at Okinawa:" Ayumu replied, asking a question instead of answering what she'd been asked.

"Okinawa? It's time for Okinawa?"

"No, do we have time to stop at Okinawa to get some sata andagi before General Umiko's plan goes live:"

"Wait... wait. Umiko's got somethin' going on?" Ranma asked. He remembered a few moments later, Umiko's smooth words to Yoshihiro about the time traveller from the Mahora Academy. Was that supposed to be going off today? He realised with a start he knew very little of this plan. Very little at all, and that disturbed him. Part of Umiko's scheming was that she tried to turn things Ranma did against him. It would be very easy to do, to force him into something he really didn't want to do, if he wasn't careful about what she did. And what was she trying to do at the moment? She had made mention of his farming plan... what was she intending?

"General Ranma, we have to goooo..."

Ranma sighed, his tired thoughts interrupted. "Right. Akio, Satoru, back to base on your exit paths. Open the pod bay doors, Ayumu, I'm coming home. Then head out over the Pacific as planned before we head home also."

"Yes sir, General Ranma sir!" came Ayumu's enthusiastic response. "South over the Pacific to Okinawa?"

"No, east over the Pacific towards Hawaii."

"Ooooooh, I love pineapp-" Ranma clicked the channel off.

Negi woke, his head still foggy from the gas he'd been knocked out with. Around him, his students lay in an unceremonious heap, some across one another, others propped up against their classmates. As he stirred, the others did, too. The only exceptions appeared to be Evangeline and her puppet Chachamaru, although the speed with which Chao also awoke from her sleep into full wakefulness suggested she had been feigning seep for some time. Similarly, Setsuna's eyes snapped open at the same time as Chao's, so it was likely she had either been feigning sleep also, or Setsuna's martial skills allowed her to wake rapidly fro a deep sleep.

The expression on Chao's face, however, suggested she was calm, but something in her manner unsettled Negi.

Evangeline merely sat with a smirk on her face. Chachamaru kneeled before her, perfectly calm, no expression visible.

As Negi sat up, he realised he was sitting on someone. Asuna, it appeared. As she opened her eyes, Negi moved off her quickly. Her bells tinkled as she sat up, the ponytails they were attached to dangling over her shoulders as she shook her head. Beside her, Konoka lay deep in sleep, a goofy smile across her face, while a simultaneously blushing and grimacing Setsuna was obviously wondering how to shift her ward and friend without waking her.

A quick glance around showed the other students were all accounted for, but the quick glance also revealed a dozen soldiers standing around then with guns aimed in their direction. Just everyday, normal human soldiers, Negi realised. If push came to shove, he could take more than a few, and he was sure that Ku Fei, Asuna, Kaede, Chachamaru and Setsuna could take the others – but they were armed with guns, and as yet, Ku Fei was still drooling over Mana, also asleep. So their chinese martial arts and gun experts were both sleeping still, and who knew where Evangeline (and therefore Chachamaru) stood on this issue at all. Still, Negi couldn't countenance putting his students in further danger without first finding out what was going on.

As he stood, he heard the safeties on the automatic rifles being flicked off and saw almost imperceptible tightening of fingers on triggers. This wasn't good. "Ah..." he started, his mind suddenly blank.

"It's all right," he heard Nitta say, "he looks like one of the students, but he's their teacher."

The guns of two soldiers were raised, and they leaned forward to grab him by the shoulders and physically pull Negi out of the circle. Asuna started to stand and come after him, her expression changing to anger quickly, but the guns quickly came back up. The other students started waking now, and Negi heard Nodoka stifle a quick yelp of surprise.

"Well, well, well," he heard Haruna say, "doesn't this present us with opportunities?"

"Do you even understand the situation we're in?" he heard Yui say. "We've obviously been captured by terrorists."

"A-Actually, I think those are JSSDF uniforms..."

"You're right, Librarian," Negi heard from a suspicious Chisame. "I cosplayed as one once." A confused sound came. "Wait, why am I telling you this? You're all freaks. I shouldn't be held here with –"

There was a meaty smacking sound, and Negi heard someone fall at the same time he heard Chisame cry out, and start sobbing.

"Master..."

"Quiet, Chachamaru."

"Negi-sensei?"

"Asuna, you're violent, they obviously speak your language. Why don't you speak with them?"

"They're not in a talking mood, class rep." Asuna's voice was tight with anger and fear.

"You have to let us go. I am the second daughter of the Yukihiro family, of the Yukihiro Group. I –"

There was another loud sound of someone being belted with a rifle.

"Nitta-sensei!" Negi turned, looking for the elder teacher, who was sitting down relaxing, looking relieved. "You have to do something!"

"There's nothing to do, Negi Springfield." Nitta took a sip from a cup of sake next to him. "This was all arranged, I think. These kids, they're getting too unruly. Too full of themselves. It's drastic, but... I think this is the way forward, to have children re-dedicate themselves to education and respect others."

"What do you mean?" Negi cried plaintively. Realising something was very, very wrong now, he looked around. They seemed to be in a classroom on the ground floor of a building. It was night outside, trees not far from the doors and windows on one side, a large open area on the other. At the front of the class, the blackboard had been replaced with a large plasma screen showing a schematic of what seemed to be an island, all broken up into various sectors. One of them showed a series of numbers, all jumbled up. Negi realised this was the class roster's seating arrangement, and that the sector they were all in was obviously this school. There were LCD computer monitors all around, with keyboards and a mess of network cabling leading along the walls before disappearing into them. Additionally, there was a pile of school bags at the front of the class. As he took a step for a closer look, the class door opened, and a man dressed in a suit stepped inside. He was mid-30s, clipped hair, and looked like any game show TV presenter – slightly greasy and untrustworthy, but up for anything. Behind him, two cameramen and a sound technician with a boom mike trailed. One of the cameramen focussed on the man who was obviously the presenter, and the other zoomed into the students surrounded by soldiers.

"I think we're ready," the presenter said to the soldiers, who nodded and gave a verbal grunt before urging the girls to their feet and separating them into lines based on their class numbers. The girls complained loudly and verbally, but no one resisted. Negi noticed even Evangeline stayed quiet, although her smirk was a little less pronounced. She resisted all attempts to drop her arms by her side, preferring to keep them folded. In the end, the cameraman who was observing this moved to a different angle where her arms couldn't be seen.

The presenter looked at the cameraman focuses on him, relaying information from an earpiece., even as the person obviously speaking to him came into the class as well with other production assistants. "Right. We're going live in ten seconds. How do I look?" The cameraman gave him a thumbs-up. "Right. Five seconds."

"Ah... excuse me –" Negi started to speak, but was shushed by one of the production assistants.

"Three... two..." The presenter took a deep breath and smiled widely at the camera. "We're here now, live at an undisclosed location in Japan, ready for the first episode. As you all know, these last weeks, the teenagers and children of Japan have become people who do not respect our ways. They have become ingrates who do not respect us or the sacrifices we have made and continue to make for them and their futures. And now, Sakura TV has, with government approval, set up this television show as a means of reminding these people to fit in, to go along with us and live again as we have taught them to live. I give you... the first episode... of Battle Royale!"

Yoshihiro turned away from the television and gave a smile at Umiko. He was pleased. So far, this was going well, and using less in the way of resources than Ranma's team. However, the energy-leeching devices she had co-opted from Ranma's team's design were hard to produce, and few had been sent out to television consumers as yet. That would change shortly, she assured him, but for the moment they weren't getting the return they would.

He also glanced at Ranma, who appeared to look a little stunned as the presenter went on, but his attention was attracted to Rozen, a spindly little old man, hunched over in the background. Formerly a master puppeteer, Rozen had become a master assassin under Yoshihiro's wing. He hadn't been too bad under Beryl, either, although he'd stayed right in the background with her apparently, and was out on a mission when Beryl... failed. Rozen caught Yoshihiro's eye, and the Master nodded.

The assassin drifted over as fast as he could through the crowd watching the functional televisions on the bridge. "Yes,Master?"

"Have you had any results yet?" Yoshihiro asked.

"Not yet, Master, no. My daughters are moving into position. They will be ready within the hour, however."

"I want no mistakes. At this time, we cannot afford the senshi to not be distracted."

"It will be as you say," Rozen bowed, then disappeared back into the background. Damn, he was good at that. It was one of the reasons Yoshihiro liked him so much.

But for now, he settled back to watch the show.

On the television, the presenter turned to the students. "Now, let's introduce our contestants."

SAILOR MOON SAYS:

Well, I don't think any of us thought this would make it there. Everytime I started writing, I'd hit a snag – work, life, motivation. Thank you to the people who've commented or sent emails in the last year, and I know I saw this every chapter but I'm going to try and make the next one a little quicker. I have, in between chapter 2 and this one, also written two chapters of a new series (not anime-related) and most of a chapter of another new series, which I'm still not entirely sure what I want to do with. New positions at work, courses, etc all contribute to not feeling quite up to writing as well, but I thought the last few weeks this chapter has been sitting unfinished long enough. A couple of train trips and it was done.

Next chapter: yeah, Rozen's daughters turn up properly. The Mahora kids are let loose on the island. Hotaru started training the other senshi, and jockeying for position begins!


	4. Chapter 4

**DISCLAIMER:** Relatively standard stuff. Existing characters are properties of the people who made them up. Mitsuki, and several other characters are mine, and so's the story, hence ownership and copyright of them belongs to me. Contact me at my usual email address if you want permission to use anything I've written for whatever purposes.

_V1.1 - Sorry guys, I didn't realise until tonight the site had screwed the .doc file's formatting up. The last chapter went up fine, and it was the same format - however, should now be fixed and a lot easier to read._

**Justice**

By

Raymond Cooper

Ordinary Angels

"I give you... the first episode... of Battle Royale!" the presenter offered with a flourish. The cameraman focussed on him zoomed in close on his face, while Negi Springfield could see on the surrounding monitors the directors cut to a shot of his students standing in line, scared witless.

"I'm here at an undisclosed location today, to bring you the latest in disciplinary shows. Battle Royale, from Sakura TV, continues the proud tradition Sakura TV has of reporting and programming items the other networks won't do. So, in consultation between Demegawa and the government, Sakura TV is proud to bring you the first in a new wave of game shows. I am your humble host, Big Man." The presenter spoke the last two words in heavily accented English. Negi supposed it was like some of the other entertainers he'd seen in Japan since coming here from Wales, that they thought it made them seem funny or cool. He wasn't too sure, actually. He didn't see the point in it. Although, a show like this on Sakura TV...

"Tonight, we bring you the first exciting episode. We give you, the viewers, and these girls, the players, the rules and equipment needed to survive the game and avoid any special elimination rounds." Big Man gestured towards the doors, and more soldiers came in. There were two for each student, and the circle of surrounding armed soldiers moved apart to let them in.

Once inside the circle, they paired off, one holding a gun, the other clipping some kind of necklace around the necks of the female students. Negi noticed Nitta pointedly not looking, and instead drinking more sake. Once all the necklaces were attached, the second group of soldiers melted back out the doors. Haruna's face cracked in a smile, and she raised her hands to touch the necklace. Ust before her fingers made contact with it, Big Man started speaking again, gently chiding.

"Ah ah ah... you might want to listen to the rules first." Haruna's hand froze. "First of all, let me congratulate you on being the first class picked for Battle Royale. This will be a yearly event, with a class chosen at random from the unruly students across Japan. And yes, viewers, if you have nominations, please send them to Sakura TV and we will include them in our investigations. The rules of the Battle Royale are simple: only one student gets off the island alive. The necklaces you are wearing contain concentrated shaped explosive charges, which if tampered with will explode and kill you."

"I don't believe this," Fuka Narutaki piped up, reaching up and grabbing her necklace with both hands and giving a tug. There was an instant reaction from the neckland, and Fuka's head ceased to exist in a shower of red and gore.

Instant pandemonium from the students. Almost as one, they screamed and tried to escape the circle around them, but a few rifle butts to the face encouraged them back in to line. It took a few minutes for the screaming to stop.

There were a few exceptions: Evangeline looked a little shaken, but otherwise her pose and mood remained unchanged. Chachamaru merely filed the act away. Kaede and Ku Fei remained still but showed extreme signs of displeasure – Negi hoped these two martial artists would remain calm at the moment and not lash out. Mana looked very dispassionate about the whole situation, as if this was something she had seen many a time before. Setsuna grabbed Konoka and held her to her chest while looking fairly grim.

Fuka's sister Fumika and Negi, on the other hand, were catatonic. Fumika didn't calm down when the others did, and was beaten several times by soldiers before being pushed roughly back into line. Negi screamed incoherently, and rushed the ring of soldiers. One turned, and belted him across the temple with a swing of his rifle, and Negi went down. The last thing he saw before darkness overtook him was Evangeline's troubled expression.

Once the child teacher was unconscious, the students sobered and quietened. Big Man continued with the rules. "So touching the necklace is a no-no. Other rules – you can see this map behind us here. It's divided into sectors, which you'll find marked out by pegs with numbered flags in the field. During the day, you can only spend an hour in each sector. At that time, you'll have a half-hour warning bell go off, and if you're still inside that sector by the end of that half-hour grace period, your necklace will explode." There were gasps, and Big Man smiled kindly. "We're not without understanding of your plight, though. Every night from ten PM until six AM, this rule will be inviolate, and your necklace will not explode. So get a good night's sleep! Now, onto the main rule of our game."

Big Man paused a few moments to make sure he had the students' attention before continuing. "The name of the game is Battle Royale. All of you will be provided with a survival pack. Contained within it are rations, which you will also find in locations dotted around the island. There is also a map of the island, and a weapon. The weapons are all randomised, so you may get something you want... or something you don't. All of the weapons have the capacity to be lethal. The reason for this is the name of the game. Battle Royale. Only one of you is to remain standing. You all need to kill everyone else. The last person left alive returns to the real world with a prize and a pardon. Remember, there are no crimes here. What you do today is legal, and will be seen as such in the eyes of the people and the law. What you do today will reintegrate you into society – you will prove you're not a delinquent."

Big Man gestured to the bags. "I will call your name, and one by one, you will come and collect your bag, then exit through the doors. You will have a minute to get clear before the next person leaves behind you, so you may want to run, or if you get a good weapon, stand and fight. Now, the first person on the list is: Sayo Aisaka."

"There is no one by that name in our class," Ayaka finally spoke when no one else did and no one came forward.

"Interesting. Yuna Akashi." Dumbly, Yuna stepped forward, picked a bag at random from the pile, and stood there, looking nervously at Big Man. He gestured towards the door. "You've got forty-five seconds before the next person is released." Yuna bolted. "Kazumi Asakura."

The wannabe journalist stepped forward, grabbed a pack and ran for the door with barely a worried glance back at Negi, who was now beginning to stir on the ground. Once outside, she took a quick dig through her pack, but the closest thing she could find to a deadly weapon was a pen.

"The pen is mightier than the sword, indeed," Asakura muttered before she disappeared into the trees.

"Yue Akase." Yue stepped forward, looking lost without her friends, but more likely the lack of a drink within easy reach. She took a bag mutely, gave Nodoka and Haruna an even stare, then headed out of the room.

"Ako Izumi." Ako stepped forward, took a bag before glancing at Negi and then the other students, before bowing slightly and running from the classroom. "Akira Okochi." The swimmer stepped forward, selected a bag and ran. "Misa Kakizaki." Misa took a bag and ran from the classroom, giving a serious look at her fellow cheerleaders Madoka and Sakurako before leaving.

"Asuna Kagurazaka." Asuna stepped forward, but where the others had their eyes on the bags as they left the other students, Asuna's eyes were riveted to Negi. Like the few who knew he could use magic, she knew their best chance for survival in this situation lay in Negi coming to his senses. While he usually had reservations about using his magic in public... he always acted first and thought later when his students or friends were in danger. Now, they were in danger, but Negi couldn't stop anything while he was unconscious.

And, being as young as he was, the belting may have done worse damage than first thought by Asuna. But, he started stirring on the floor, and Asuna's lead time was decreasing, so she grabbed her bag, gave a quick nod at Nodoka, Kaede, Setsuna and Konoka, then ran from the room into the darkness outside.

From that point, Big Man continued announcing names, and there were few problems, apart from when Fumika was called. Chachamaru declined to take a bag. Konoka waited outside the door for Setsuna to take her bag before the swordswoman led Konoka off in a slightly different direction to the others. Chao went to select one bag, then at random grabbed a different one before leaving. Kaede refused to run into the trees outside, preferring to walk to the tree line, then made a massive leap to one of the branches before disappearing.

Chisame found her bag had a laptop as the weapon. "What am I going to do with this?" she asked disgustedly once outside. "Flame someone to death?"

Evangeline also refused to take a bag. Nodoka gave a bow at Negi with a blush, and gave a slight bow to Big Man (without the blush) before leaving. Negi, by this time was sitting upright, but looking pale and dazed. Nodoka noticed that Chamo, at least, had his wits about him and was playing dumb, acting like a normal everyday ermine. Ayaka spent most of her minute lead time giving a speech about how the Yukihiro group would crush Sakura TV before disappearing, and Satsuki smiled at Zazie before leaving. Zazie, ever the showman, cartwheeled out the door.

Big Man turned back to the cameras after Zazie had gone. "Who will be the first to die? Who will be the first to go? Sakura TV will be running hour-long specials throughout each day until we have our final victor in our Battle Royale!" One of the production assistants dimmed the lights, and on the screens, the network went to advertisements. Big Man lowered his arms and turned to the directors. "How do you think we went?"

"Prelims are showing we're doing great. There's also congratulations here from Demegawa."

"Really? That's great!" Big Man seemed to have forgotten completely about Negi, who by now was stable enough to walk over to Nitta.

"Why? Why did you do it?"

Nitta considered before pouring himself some more sake and drinking deep. "Because," he replied eventually, "they're out of control and need to be taught a lesson."

* * *

Hotaru was outside, pre-dawn. The televised event on Sakura TV the night before had been disturbing enough for her not to have been able to sleep very much. She thought the other senshi had also had problems sleeping, but no one else had surfaced for their morning exercises as yet. 

She stepped through her katas, then moved into combat training on one of the wooden dummies Ranma had erected for the senshi to practise on in their everyday, civilian forms. She was getting good at this, she thought, snap-kicking and punching without worrying about whether she was going to fall over feeling faint, or actually pass out. Ranma had done so much for her health, and she felt she owed it to him to continue with her training, so that she could show him how much she had improved when he returned.

He would return. Of that there was no doubt. Unfinished business lay between the two of them, involving the two of them.

As the dawn broke, the other senshi woke, and headed downstairs. Hotaru could hear the young women talk as they left their rooms and headed through the front lounge to he doors. Usagi was yawning and talking about the dream she'd had where her and Mamo-kun – but no, she couldn't talk about that at all. Rei opined that Usagi was full of something – oh wait, she wasn't and that was the problem. Hotaru suppressed a smirk at that crack. Ami was silent, but the tapping of her laptop's keys was audible through the doors. Minako seemed perky – but Minako always seemed perky. Makoto was the quietest, and just before the doors were opened, Hotaru's guess about her silence was proven right when Makoto asked, "Are we just going to pretend last night didn't happen?"

The conversation went out of the senshi. Rei eventually slid the door open. As they filed out in their training gis, Hotaru greeted each of them with a solemn nod.

"We're not doing that, Makoto," Usagi said in a quiet voice. "What we saw last night..."

"That poor girl," Minako echoed.

"She reminded me a little of Chibi-Usa," Rei agreed. "Not in how she looked. Just... the age. The naivety. The innocence. Being in the wrong place."

"There's been little backlash online," Ami added. "Bulletin boards are full of people cheering that someone is doing something about the rebellious teenagers. They're blaming this Narutaki girl for her death, rather than the network of whomever developed those collars."

"We have to do something," Makoto said flatly.

"What can we do?" asked Mitsuki from behind them. She looked bad this morning, Hotaru had to admit. It looked like she wasn't the only one who couldn't sleep, but Mitsuki had bruises and scrapes on her knuckles that suggested to the younger girl that Mitsuki had been hitting things. Hard things. For a very long time.

"What do you mean?" Usagi asked. "We have to do something about –"

"We can't do anything to change public opinion, or have you forgotten our message about that last week?" Mitsuki stepped out from behind the others, walking over towards Hotaru and wrapping bandages around her hands to protect her knuckles. "Let's face it, as super-powered sailor-suited heroes, we've been beaten. For the moment, at least, I'll give you – we don't know what will happen in the future. But you've never really acted in the open. You've never really had to deal with people. You've been mysterious figures in the background. The people you've saved have rarely remembered much about you. What's been happening in Japan of late, this whole 'magical boys and girls out in the open', it's new to you. Something you haven't had to do before." She stopped walking once she reached Hotaru, but didn't turn back, instead she continued staring at Hotaru's feet. "I've done it. When I first manifested... when I manifested again, it was... it was bad. I nearly killed someone then, and it was by accident, but no one would talk to me after that. You all... and Ranma... were the first people to really talk to me in years. But I lived through what you're experiencing now. People hating you, not because of something you've necessarily actually done. People didn't hate me because of what I'd done, they hated me because of the stories they told each other. I was a wicked witch, come to kill everyone, if you listened to rumour."

Usagi left the group to stand beside Mitsuki and hugged her. "I think I know what you're trying to say. As much as we could go in there right now, that would give people even more of a will to hate and destroy us. Which means it would happen again and again, and wouldn't stop. That we need to recover our image first before we can take these actions, otherwise we'll just make things worse."

"That's right," Mitsuki replied quietly. "And in a case like this, it hurts. It hurts so much, it's like something physical in my chest trying to get out. I know what you all are feeling. I know what you're thinking. But for now, we have to let this happen because –"

Hotaru completed the sentence. "Because we will make things worse for everyone, not just these kids on the island. They're not acceptable sacrifices, but we'll make other innocents suffer if we run in there right now."

"We need credibility," Usagi slumped forward dejectedly. Then she brightened almost immediately. "But we can do this. We have to do this. Ignoring this kind of thing is what will darken Crystal Tokyo so much it would be useless. How can we live up to that ideal without fighting now?"

"Usagi, I understand your feelings," Hotaru said evenly. "And if Setsuna, Michiru or Haruka were here now, they would tell you what I was telling you: you'll forever ruin the future." What Hotaru didn't say was, if the three outermost senshi were here, they _would_ have decreed the students of Mahora Academy's class 3A to be expendable. Hotaru didn't think they were, but she suspected the old Saturn to have considered them acceptable losses in the balance of what they stood to lose and gain. Attacking that island now, rescuing the students, it just wasn't an option. If only because... "Ami. I know you were searching online last night with the Mercury computer. Would I be correct in assuming you were searching for them?"

Ami nodded, a little surprised. "Yes, yes was."

"Where were they?"

Ami fell silent.

"You couldn't find them, right? Seemed to have vanished from the face of the Earth? No trace of them on any island in the Pacific?"

"I tied into US spysats as well as a number of Russian and Chinese spysats. I couldn't find anything. Sakura TV's networks held no information, either." Ami sounded helpless.

"I suspected as much. They're not here. Wherever they are, we don't have the ability to reach them unless we can find them first."

Usagi nodded slowly in defeat. "But we can't just leave them..."

"We can fight on in their name."

"It's not the same..." Usagi's voice was now almost inaudible.

"It means we try harder to make sure this never happens again." And, Hotaru added privately, if we get the chance before it's over, we do something then. "But this morning. I have some changes to our training. Minako, Rei, Makoto, Usagi and Ami, I've been reading, I've been thinking, I've been watching whatever DVDs I could get my hands on after Ranma left. I'm taking over your training, and I'll organise for some other teachers to help you as well. But for now, I want to see where you're all up to."

Five transformation wands came out. "Uh, we're doing this untransformed." Five women looked back at Hotaru in amazement. "What? I'll tell you why afterwards. But for now, I need you all to stay normal. Or, what passes for normal for you all."

Quickly, Hotaru divided up the senshi and began putting them through their paces. She wasn't Ranma, she wasn't the teacher he was, wasn't able to see all the holes in their styles and skills. She couldn't teach them ki-based attacks she didn't already know. She couldn't go on for hours about an enemy's fighting style. But she had been alongside him long enough that she knew a few things and could walk the senshi through more than they knew. It would have to be enough for the moment, but it would be hard going for her at the best of times.

It was the next part she didn't like the thought of.

When the five senshi were finished, an hour and a half later, Hotaru moved back in front of them, thoughtful. "I have an idea, and I'm going to need everyone's help to make this work. The people hate magic at the moment. They hate the unknown, the alien, anything not like them. So, let's give them something to cheer for. Something inherently human, like them but better. Ranma gave them International Rescue, a mysterious organisation that saves the world from giant robots. We can do the same thing."

"But we need magic to fight giant robots!" Usagi blurted out before she could stop herself.

"That's not entirely true. Yoshihiro is still moving his conventional forces, and we know from Ranma that the low-level monsters can be fought and beaten by normal people with training. Well, with a lot of training." Hotaru's eyes moved over the other senshi. Mitsuki drifted over from her training to watch. "But the thing is, what TV shows does Japan love?"

"Dramas."

"Crime shows."

"Uh... cartoons?"

Mitsuki snorted. "If you're talking young Japanese men, sentai shows."

"Exactly," Hotaru replied. "Groups of everday human soldiers, giving their all for society and civilisation. It's the one thing we have going for us."

"How exactly do you come to that conclusion?" Rei asked, rolling her eyes.

"Mitsuki?" Hotaru nodded at the older woman, who at first appeared hesitant, but finally moved to stand next to Hotaru.

"That answer is easy. We're already a sentai team. Soldiers in group uniforms with our own colours, fighting for truth, love and justice. Pretty soldiers in sailor suits. What we're all missing is that we're not exactly one hundred percent human anymore, if we ever were. I don't know what we were born, but our real selves go back millennia and that's really obvious if you know what you're looking for."

"But, seven of us disappear and seven girls in fruity costumes appear, the people will think something's up," Rei remarked drily.

"No," Usagi said, her voice quiet and introspective. "I think they're right. We may be destined to rule, but we have to be like everyone else as well. How can we hope to be leaders if we don't know what our people go through?" Usagi seemed to be talking herself into it, an almost stream-of-consciousness effect. "And then, once we're loved for being normal, we can announce ourselves as fighting as humans, but actually being magical people. We can restore people's faith and confidence in their defenders, and then proceed straight away into building Crystal Tokyo. We have to do this! We have to do this right now!"

Hotaru agreed, as did Mitsuki, and the other senshi fell into line behind those three. "So, I get to be Red," Usagi called first.

"Obviously, as Mars is the 'red planet', I will be Red," Rei cut in, annoyed.

"Actually, Minako will be leading this team," Hotaru interrupted to save any further arguments. "She's your de facto leader of your inner Royal Guard, she'll be Red." Hotaru also referred to the leader of a sentai team, always coloured Red. Sometimes a hothead, sometimes angry and misunderstood, the Red character was always passionate and committed to the cause. Also, Red was seen to be very cool. "I also see Makoto as Black."

Usagi, who had her eyes closed and fingers crossed, looked disappointed. But Black was often a loner, a person of few words. Usagi was not a woman of few words, she had to admit.

"I'd say Rei would be Ami would be Blue, Rei Yellow and Usagi..."

"I knew it, Pink. Like Chibi-Usa." Usagi grumped. "She's not here and I'm _still_ reminded of her. And the fact that she's related to me." Hotaru stifled a smile at that remark, but Rei didn't bother hiding her wide smile.

"Oh, poor little Pink, with a name like that I'd expect you'll be some kind of angry dynamo of justice.""Or a rock star," Ami added uncharacteristically. Makoto gave her a nudge in the ribs with her elbow. "What? I do have interests outside study, you know."

"Of course," Makoto apologised, "it's just not like you to bring them up out loud."

"We do need to pick a team name," Hotaru reminded the other women, trying to get the meeting back on track.

"Ohhhh! I have an idea!" Minako shouted, waving her hands in the air. "I know a great one!"

"Yes, Minako?"

"Because I'm leading the team, we should call ourselves the Venus Five!"

Ami snickered.

"What? I'm Sailor Venus, and there will be five of us. So, Venus Five." Minako put her hands on her hips and scowled at Ami. "If you don't want to be part of the Venus Five, we'll replace you with someone else."

"Really," Ami replied, trying, and succeeding, to stifle a giggle.

"Why are you laughing?" Minako asked.

"All for Venus Five?" Hotaru asked. All the women raised their hands. "Venus Five it is." Again, Ami giggled. Hotaru figured it had to do with something dirty she didn't know about, but decided to avoid controversy by asking at that point in time. "So, all agreed: your team name will be Venus Five. So, Venus, Red, Venus Black, Venus Blue, Venus Yellow and Venus Pink."

"Why couldn't I be Venus Green?" Usagi grumbled aloud. "Green is a nicer colour than pink. It's still not a good colour, but it's still... oh, sorry Makoto. Green is okay. It's just I'd prefer red."

"It's not easy being green, Usagi, I don't think you could handle it."

"Right," Hotaru grabbed the attention of everyone again. "That's all I've got to say. We'll need to get some uniforms over the next few days. Makoto, I was hoping you could help there."

"I'll give some fashion advice!" Minako pipped up.

"I want clothes, Minako," Rei retorted drily, "I've seen what you wear to college."

"But –"

"Yes, Usagi?"

Usagi almost fell over from the importance of the information she had to ask about. "But how do we get our hands on giant robots?"

"Oh..."

"Ahhh..."

"That's been taken care of," Hotaru said. "Now, if there isn't anything else, I want you all to keep practising. I've got to go out for a while. I'll get some material while I'm out, but I need to speak to some people."

Mitsuki turned to follow Hotaru. "I'll come, too. I'm not part of that team, so I'll try and be of use where I can."

Hotaru nodded. "Okay. We'll get freshened up, and changed, and then we're going to Nerima. I have to see some people about training."

* * *

On the island, Mana methodically dug through her backpack. No gun. Just the food, and a garden trowel. Well, not that she'd expected a gun, not by a long shot. She had hoped for something slightly more useful and distance-related than a garden trowel. She tested its weight for throwing, and decided that while it would make a great weapon for a diversion, it wouldn't really do that well for ranged combat as it lacked kill power. 

No, such a weapon was inherently better used in close-in fighting. Mana didn't prefer to go fist-to-fist with people, mostly because she'd trained with too many people who were excellent melee brawlers, as well as her own preference to ranged combat, for her to feel comfortable with fighting. She also knew there were others in her class who were superior melee fighters than herself. While she didn't know so much about Kaede, Ku Fei was superior while fighting close in, and Chao might be a match – it was just there was so little she knew about her Chinese friend that again, she didn't feel comfortable fighting her until she'd had a chance to see her in open combat against one of the other experts.

So, for now, Mana would have to stick to the plan she'd formulated once she'd heard the rules in the classroom. She was going to take the weaker girls first, and kill until she was one of the last students left, then make her big move. This was all going to be a gamble, and would no doubt go much easier on her if someone had a gun, but she couldn't count on that for now. First, she had to find someone weak...

* * *

"Are you sure this is wise, Master?" 

Evangeline A.K. McDowell walked in her own self-satisfied manner, arms folded behind her head and a smirk on her face. Behind her, Chachamaru carried both her own and Eva's backpacks without effort. The gynoid appeared slightly concerned. "Why? He's not the Thousand Master, but even he should have no problem resolving this problem. All we've got to do is wait."

"I think he will not be so quick to react," Chachamaru said finally, after consideration.

"Why do you think that?"

"For one, Master, Negi-sensei may think this is too much for him to handle at the moment. He is most likely shocked at the death of Fuka Narutaki and fears if he interferes now, he may doom us all." Chachamaru gestured at the necklace on her own neck. "While this would not affect you, and I could be repaired, the other students may not be so lucky, and his concern for the wellbeing of his students may bind him."

"He is young," Eva conceded, "but he is impulsive."

"He has also just lost a major fight, Master, and had to be rescued. He may now be having doubts about his own ability."

"It's not like these are mages or demons," Eva responded, annoyed. "They're humans, and pose no threat to him."

"He is not yet a combat mage, Master," Chachamaru reminded the elder vampire.

"..." Evangeline stopped in the middle of the track. "You're right, Chachamaru," she said after a few minutes rapid thought. "But he is the son of the Thousand Master. This much –"

"He is also ten years old."

"... maybe he will need help."

"Maybe he will, Master." Eva couldn't tell, not really, but it sounded as if Chachamaru sounded pleased with herself for manipulating her so easily. But no, Eva had to have heard that wrong. Had to be reading too much into the statement. No matter. Eva waved off the implications.

"What weapons do we have in the ... why am I asking? _I'm_ the weapon." Eva sighed, and looked down at her body, with the appearance of a ten year old girl. She sighed again, and shrugged. "I can see me causing fear and sowing discord wherever I go. Lic lac la lac lilac!" With a lowly audible zing! Eva's activation release charged her body with magic. She looked down. Even though she was crackling with magical energies that even a beginner mage would take heed of, soldiers and television engineers likely wouldn't be able to see anything beyond the body of a ten year old girl pointing at them and yelling at them to lay down their weapons and... "Why would I tell them to disarm?" she asked herself again. "I must be getting soft in my ol... maturity." With a wave, she activated her glamour, now appearing as a woman in her late teenage years, dressed in a revealing leather outfit, with batwings, a full adult set of vampire teeth, and perfect skin. Skipping puberty could be such a good thing.

"Chachamaru, come!" With that, Evangeline reversed their direction, and headed back for the school.

* * *

Usagi towelled her hair in the privacy of her bedroom. The senshi had trained for another hour after Hotaru and Mitsuki had left, finally breaking up to go have showers and get ready for their day. Usagi didn't have any classes up first, so she was taking her time, but at least someone else had time to visit her room while she'd been locked in the shower: there was a short note on her bed, with a pen. 

_To wind or not to wind?_ the note said, with a checkbox under each option. Below that, the note continued. _Tick your answer, and place the letter in your desk drawer._

"What?" Usagi blurted out. She stuck her head out of her bedroom door, but couldn't hear anyone else in the dorm. "Is anyone else here?" she yelled, but there was no answer. She closed the door to her room again, and picked the note up. "To wind or not to wind? What's this about? Is someone trying to wind me up?" Deciding someone was, and wanting to find out what was going on, Usagi ticked the "wind" box, and put the letter in her desk drawer.

Once she closed the drawer, she turned back to her door, waiting. After a few moments, she could hear a faint whistling sound. It was muffled, as if it was outside her room. She was right; here it came. Coming right towards her now. She smiled to herself, knowing this was going to be good when she saw the look on their face, that she knew she was being set up, knew she was being had. Any moment now...

... Usagi was right about being set up. She was also right about them coming towards her right now. She was just wrong about the method of entry into her room they would take.

Behind her, the window shattered, a suitcase hit her in the back of her head, and she collapsed to the floor, unconscious...

SAILOR MOON SAYS:

Wow, two chapters in a week? Am I sick? (Yes, probably) Anyway, I won't bore you with other comings and goings, tonight has killed me writing the last 1500 words. So! Coming in chapter 5, more from Battle Royale! The killings begin. And more on Hotaru's trip to Nerima.


	5. Chapter 5

**DISCLAIMER:** Relatively standard stuff. Existing characters are properties of the people who made them up. Mitsuki, and several other characters are mine, and so's the story, hence ownership and copyright of them belongs to me. Contact me at my usual email address if you want permission to use anything I've written for whatever purposes. As per usual, I'm having formatting ripped out on upload, and now having line breaks introduced for no apparent reason. I apologise in advance for any formatting errors you may meet.

**Justice**

By

Raymond Cooper

Who Wants To Live Forever

Two students committed suicide the first night of the programme. They simply couldn't take the death of one of their classmates in such a casual manner, and decided to end it all. To the first night's tally, viewers added Akira Okochi and Natsumi Murakami to Fuka Narutaki of the dead.

Cameras caught Akira's dramatic leap from a cliff top towards the raging surf below; a strong swimmer, some of the people who knew her from Mahora Academy thought she may have tried to swim for it. But the cliff wasn't right on the shoreline, and her body was discovered by a roaming cameraman at first light on the rocks below, a trail of blood behind her suggesting she had tried to claw her way into the pounding ocean.

Natsumi Murakami, on the other hand, had spent the night in an abandoned shack with her school roommates Chizuru Naba and their class representative, Ayako Yukihiro, but around five thirty in the morning, Chizuru awoke to find Natsumi gone. The cameras had recorded her crying most of the night, before calming around five AM, and leaving the shack. The outdoor camera saw her sling her backpack over her back, and head into the trees. Chizuru quickly woke Ayako when she found Natsumi missing, and the two gathered their backpacks and left the shack. While discussing which way to turn, there was a gunshot from some distance away, a loud BANG that startled birds in the trees into a loud, raucous alarm that awoke those still sleeping on the island. With a significant glance at each other, Chizuru and Ayako plunged into the surrounding forest, but as they knew Natsumi had the only gun between the packs of the three girls, they suspected the worst.

Mana Tatsumiya, part-time shrine priestess and part-time mercenary, snapped her head around at the distant echo of a gunshot. So, there was a handgun of some kind on this island. That held promise. She began making her way rapidly in the direction of the fading retort, catching sight of birds rising above the trees about two kilometres ahead. That was quite some distance to cover before anyone else had the same idea.

That thought pulled Mana up. Everyone knew Mana would go for the gun. Everyone would know that, or suspect it. Kaede would definitely be in the area rapidly to try and catch Mana at a disadvantage, and who knew about Chao, Ku Fei or the others?

This would bear further thought. No doubt the students would go through several phases. First, they would no doubt be scared and hesitant, until a few more killed. Then, those remaining would become harder, tougher, more willing to kill to survive. And continued survival would harden those left until they were like diamond in the endgame. That was where Mana had to reach. She was already harder than diamond, ready to do what was needed to complete her mission, and this time her mission was getting out alive. First, though, she needed to focus on some of the other targets...

Her mind made up, Mana turned away from the direction of the gunshot, heading back towards the school.

* * *

"It was horrifying," Ranma said to Natsumi's immobile form. He sat alone on the battleship's stripped bridge, the girl tied into the ship's systems seated to his left, but his eyes were locked on a single monitor that showed the latest updates to Battle Royale. Apparently, a girl had just committed suicide through use of a gun found in her backpack. "Umiko is very pleased with herself, but... I don't know how the Master is thinking about this. I don't know his reactions, and that's limiting my ideas. If I act the wrong way now..."

As ever, Natsumi remained silent and still, but the screen changed to two of the girls stumbling on the corpse of their friend, gun still clutched in her hand, the top of her head surprisingly free from the massive exit wound Ranma had unconsciously been expecting, but the wound was covered in hair matted thickly with blood. He watched as one of her friends, a dark-haired young woman who looked like she should have been in the workforce, bent down to retrieve the gun and smooth over the girl's features. Both girls looked up in surprise at some sound; the remote camera turned, and there was the ninja-girl who had leapt into the trees, looking sad.

"Turn it off," Ranma shuddered, not wanting to see their pain.

"Okay :" said Ayumu. Ranma started, spinning around to see her lean forward and turn the monitor off. "You missed the planning stage this morning. That's bad, General Ranma-sir." She sounded reproving.

"Ayumu! You – you shouldn't sneak up on people."

"It's my special skill :)"

"Ayumu... please... warn me before you pop into a room."

She sighed. "I came to watch something. Something... you know that Thunderbird 2 has a fuel leak in the port engine nacelle? If it's not fixed before we next go out, it could be dangerous."

Ranma blinked at the sentence. "What?"

"It could take, oh, a week to repair."

"When did this leak start? I thought we came away from HawkWing pretty well, ya know, apart from the whole losing-the-elevator-cars thing."

Ayumu shook her head, a slightly dazed expression on her face. "Nah. This happened recently. I was watching my hand-held TV –" she held this up in front of Ranma's face to show him. He blinked again, and then the object was put away. "- just watching that new show, and I got angry :( So I punched the fuel line several times until it ruptured."

"When did this happen?" Ranma asked, helplessly amazed at the way the story was progressing.

"About five minutes from now."

Ranma blinked. "Five – it hasn't happened yet?"

"Nooooo."

Feeling this spiral out of control, Ranma asked, "Why are you going to do it then?"

Ayumu gave him a hard stare. "I may act like an idiot, but you'll find I'm sometimes not. I am your lieutenant, not your keeper, and the others are as well. If you have things to do, places to be, we will cover for you."

"I –"

"The Master will not ask too closely, either."

That one floored Ranma. "How do you know that? How _can_ you know that?"

Ayumu's blank expression came back on, her mouth semi-open. "Aye, aye General Ranma-sir! I shall go inspect the fuel lines!" She did an about turn, then slipgated out of the bridge. Moments later, Umiko stepped into the room, eyeing Ranma suspiciously.

"What are you doing in here?"

"My usual catch-up with Baku," Ranma said, struggling to contain his mixed concern and excitement. Was what Ayumu just implied to him correct? Was Yoshihiro really concerned about how things were progressing? Was he worried about what happened to those students in the Battle Royale TV show? Or was he trying to catch Ranma out? Was there something deeper behind this? R was it even just Ayumu being an idiot at his expense, or trying to get rid of him?

That said, Ayumu had never given him any cause to doubt her beliefs or actions. She seemed an airhead, said stupid things and was the weirdest girl he'd ever known – human, senshi _or _monster, but she seemed more grounded than anyone else he'd known in so many ways. It had also never really occurred to him before that with all the things he asked of her, she managed to perform her duties admirably.

Well, apart from the garbled message to Hotaru a few weeks ago.

One thing was certain; if he was going to act, he couldn't do it as Ranma Saotome, either male or female forms. Yoshihiro knew about one for certain, and the other... Ranma hadn't advertised his curse since joining the Dark Kingdom forces, but that didn't mean Yoshihiro didn't know about it. He had to have known that in the System, his body was female. Ranma had used his female form to fool Yoshihiro's troops in the past, but that previous anonymity couldn't be counted on for this. Could Ranma use a mask?

No... no. There was one more trick Ranma had up his sleeve.

"Hmm," Umiko mused, scratching her chin with her claws absently. "I don't trust you. I think you'll do something to sabotage my plans. To interfere with the leeching of energy on a mass scale."

"Hey, I helped you, remember?" Ranma pointed out. "Who got you the plans for the devices my guys came up with? Me. Who gave you the farm idea? Me. If anything, I think you're trying to stab me in the back. You think I can't hear you whisperin' in the Master's ear about me and how I can't be trusted? I can be a lot of things, but I'm not deaf." Ranma stalked over to Umiko, who flicked her fingers out wide, arms slightly behind her body ready to make a slashing gesture if Ranma tried anything – ha! _Let her think she's safe if she wants to,_ Ranma thought to himself savagely, before beating down the instant reaction to want to be the threat she was accusing him of. It was a scary moment for them both. "And I'm not trying to screw you over. Why am I here? I told the Master, I told you, I told everyone. That girl at my funeral, she will destroy the world if she's not stopped now. An' it's going to have ta be me to stop her. I can't do that out there. I can do that here."

"And once this girl is gone, Saotome?" Umiko growled angrily, unconsciously stepping back to give herself room if things came to a fight between them. "Will you run back to the senshi then? Will you change your allegiance once again, but this time tear us apart from the inside out?"

Ranma shook his head. "I'd only do that if the Master wanted me to. I'm a man of my word. My honour. It might be a bit weird, but if I make an oath to do something, like I did, then I'll carry it out."

"Good –"

"Now, people who try and get me killed, or try to kill me, that's a different story. For them, all bets would be off."

Umiko stared hard at Ranma before lowering his eyes. It wasn't a complete submissive gesture though, Ranma noted, it was more of a "You've won this round but I'll be back," gesture. That kind of worried him; how many times was he going to have to go down this route? "Of course, you would be stupid to not react if... attacked. Who would do such a thing? In fact –"

Before the Master's aide could finish her sentence, something exploded outside, very loud and echoing through the remains of the stripped battlecruiser. A second later, Ayumu slipgated back to stand beside Ranma, her eyes the only part of her face approaching clear of soot and burn marks.

"Oops :("

* * *

She'd already had an encounter with some old man who latched onto her chest, buried his face in between her breasts and breathed deeply, resisting all attempts to remove him, and now in the distance, Hotaru saw Tatewaki Kuno chasing his beloved Akane Tendo. His laugh lingered longer than he did, though, not seeing his Goddess for all the other pretty women around. That made Hotaru a little sad, like having a television show she's watched one episode of cancelled – in other words, wondering why she felt anything about it at all?

That said, while Kuno had been an idiot at times, he had been trusting and helpful and respectful... in the main. There was still that fat crack she had never forgiven him for. But at the very least, he could have helped her remove this parasite from her chest. He wasn't digging into her flesh at all, but he was almost impossible to remove. So, instead, she ignored the elderly man, buried her hate inside, and continued walking.

She encountered Shampoo outside her grandmother's restaurant, loading up a delivery on her bike. She looked curiously at Hotaru, noticing the old lech and then noticing who he was attached to. "Ahh! You bad man, old pervert," Shampoo yelled, whipping the lech from Hotaru's chest. As he went, there was a sudden loss of support from that area, and Hotaru glanced down, dumbfounded – everything was hanging naturally. Not that she had a lot to begin with, but it was an unusual feeling. She turned her gaze back to the pervert, who somehow held her bra in his hands, cackling as he rubbed it against his cheek.

"Give that back!" Hotaru cried, embarrassed.

"It's mine now, my pretty! My precious!" And before Hotaru could act, he had slipped nimbly from Shampoo's grasp and bounced off across a fence. Hotaru reached for her transformation wand, intending to retrieve her underwear, but held; the person she was after was here, at the restaurant, and going after the old man now would give her quarry time to get away. She sighed, and turned back to Shampoo.

"I come in peace. Take me to your great-grandmother."

"Ahhh..." Shampoo glanced down at the girl's chest, and if the girl was going to pretend nothing had happened, she also wouldn't ask. But this girl could be a threat – sure, she'd healed Shampoo, but she'd also almost destroyed Furinken High, the Tendo house, and half of Nerima. Then, there was the giant monster in Tokyo that put everyone into a computer game, and the fact that, as Shampoo recalled from exceedingly distant memories almost as if glimpsed through someone else's eyes, she had also destroyed that world and everyone in it... there were also the stories her great-grandmother talked about, of the old times in China... this girl could be either good or bad.

No, not good or bad, she obviously had her own moral code; Shampoo recognised that, but she had a different moral structure than most of the rest of the world. Sacrificing a planet to stop an enemy was ultimately a good act, but bad for the six billion or so people on it.

Finally, she shook her head to clear it. "Great-grandmother inside. She expecting you." She stepped backwards towards her bike, not letting Hotaru out of her sight for a moment in case she tried any arcane magic on her – Shampoo had heard all the legends as a child and didn't quite trust these girls very much at all. "She been expecting you for long time."

Hotaru took that to mean Cologne had planned for this eventuality, and readied herself before heading for the restaurant. Shampoo's sudden grip on her arm stopped her suddenly. "Strange girl help Shampoo once, so Shampoo give you warning: enter to left of door." With a determined nod, the young Amazon stepped back again, then left on her bike without a look back. Hotaru continued inside, making sure to keep to the far left of the doorway.

This was a good thing, as a spiked mace whistled through the empty air next to her, swinging from a rope attached to the ceiling. It looked as if it was supposed to swing down in the middle of the door, but had been attached slightly off-centre, so it had swung wide of its intended target – _if_ they had walked to the far left of the door, as Hotaru had. No one was inside, which surprised Hotaru – by this time, it was almost lunch, and she had expected there would be a rush of people in the restaurant today. But no, no one.

Not even Cologne or Mousse, which really surprised Hotaru. She let go with her senses, as Ranma had taught her, and searched, but nothing. Either no one was here, or anyone in the building was deliberately hiding their ki from her. Hotaru suspected the latter option over the former. If nothing else, Cologne would want to see what she would be facing.

"Cologne." She spoke in a normal tone of voice, low volume, assuming that the Chinese Elder would be in this room somewhere, or the adjoining kitchen where pots still simmered. "I don't come today as an enemy, but I do come because you've been my enemy." Still nothing. Hotaru continued. "Once, long ago, you tried to poison Ranma. You gave a powder to Nabiki Tendo to do something to him, but it didn't work. Apparently so, anyway. You made an enemy of me that day, sent your granddaughter to us to either scare us off or kill us, and you underestimated our strength. You continue to underestimate is. Right now, you will talk to me. You will do what I say."

"And why would I do that, child?" Cologne's voice echoed through the rooms. It was impossible to pinpoint. _Yeah,_ Hotaru thought, _definitely hiding herself._ "What possible reason could you give to make me want to help you or _your kind?_"

"My kind? What possible reason?" Hotaru shrugged, calmly. "You owe me, Cologne. You owe me big time. You tried to engineer a conflict against us, which wasn't successful. I healed your granddaughter."

"She was stupid and deserved what she got," Cologne grumbled, now appearing at a far table, perched on her walking stick. "Don't try to use familial concerns to sway me to your side. As a Chinese Amazon, it won't work. Your diplomatic skills are two thousand years too early to be able to convince me."

"Then," Hotaru suggested, "how about the part of me that is more than two thousand years old? The million year old me, the one I can see reflected in the fear in your eyes and the quaver of your voice?"

"You're bluffing. You need me for something."

"I need you," Hotaru agreed, letting her transformation wand drop visibly into her fingers and twirling it absently. She called on Saturn for the coldness to her voice. "But I don't need this restaurant. I don't need this ward. I don't need China. And perhaps... perhaps I don't need two Amazons."

"... what do you want, child?"

"Two things. First, I want to know why you hate us so much. I'm gathering it's something that happened in the past, but none of my people have been to China. Second, I need you to train us. I need you to teach us what you taught Ranma. And we need to be good, quickly."

"How quickly?"

"You would have two weeks."

Cologne made a disgusted, spitting noise in the back of her throat. "It would be impossible. You would need at least ten years of intense training to –"

"Ranma once explained the Chinese Amazons to me. He also explained how rapidly your children develop as fighters. This is what we need. We need to develop very quickly. Not necessarily be completely effective and masters of the art, but we need a crash course."

Cologne considered. "Other than not destroying everything I own or hold dear, what do you offer me?"

Hotaru smiled, and it was as cold as a methane slush far from a sun. "I offer you your life, and that of your granddaughter, and your soon-to-be grandson, and that of every Amazon in China and arond the globe. After all, we're fighting to save the world."

"Very convincing arguments."

Hotaru's smile thawed. "They often are."

"The second of your questions is the hardest, but I will do what I can." Cologne shifted herself. "The first part... is mostly legend. It is said that thousands of years ago, there was a man in black who visited our lands. He promised much power, much greatness, and swayed the Elders to his side. He said there would be others following him from the War of the Heavens, women like ourselves but monstrous. And that when they appeared, they would make our women as monsters to fight as sport." Cologne shifted uncomfortably. "They came, or so the legend goes. Pretty women in what you would today call sailor suits. They came, and it was as the man in black had said. We couldn't stop them. We couldn't hurt them. Many of our people turned into monsters when they came – our best, our brightest, our strongest. The tribe was devastated when these women left, but the man... the man remained. Hidden in the hills nearby, he returned to find our village all but destroyed. We had not given him up, although we were now few in number. As thanks, he gave us the powder I gave to the Tendo girl."

"Did he say what it was for?" Hotaru asked.

Cologne shook her head slowly. "Not as such. He said it was something to be used in the event these warrior women returned. The magic they performed... the strength they displayed... at that moment my people were changed forever, and began researching fighting techniques and styles to defeat them if they ever showed again." Cologne eyed the much-younger girl warily. "But they never returned, until now. We'd had reports form Minako Ward that several of our agents had seen evidence of these warriors, but for the moment they were ignoring us in China. I didn't just come here to bring who was to be my future son in law to heel for my granddaughter's sake; I came here to follow up on these reports. But they were almost impossible to track or find. Now I know why."

Hotaru quirked an eyebrow in question.

"Up close, I still can't see that you that had attacked us so long ago. It's some kind of magic, isn't it?"

At this, Hotaru shrugged. "It's easier to think of it as magic, but I think it's more extremely advanced technology."

"Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic," Cologne chided, apparently risking much. When she saw Hotaru really wasn't here to do harm or explode if prodded, Cologne drew some of her strength back and narrowed her eyes. "Either way. While it may not have been you directly, I believe that whatever it is within you that makes you that way was indeed there. In which case, I have a question before I can say whether I accept your request or not."

"Yes?"

"Why did you do it?"

"This... might require a more direct answer than from myself," Hotaru considered, and twirled her transformation wand again in her fingers. With her spoken transformation phrase, the identity of Sailor Saturn fell around Hotaru's shoulders like a comforting arm filled with parental love. Cologne's eyes were wide, but at the moment she stood her ground. It was when Saturn stopped holding back her power and gave herself over to the ancient mind within that Cologne moved back towards the rear wall of the restaurant, the raw intensity forcing the Amazon Elder back against her will. She found she couldn't even look fully at Saturn in this state. When the senshi spoke, her voice howled with dread authority. "We did nothing. Your people were corrupted from within by the monster they had sheltered. It would have been much worse for your tribe and the world had we not intervened."

"The... the world?" croaked Cologne.

"Those monsters would have absorbed your people, their life force, the life force of all those around them, to power Beryl's mad ambition. Even sealed, Beryl managed to act. The other Outer System senshi and I had been reborn at that time into other bodies. After that time, we slept again until needed. Until now." Saturn looked down at her hand. Along with the rest of her, the skin was glowing. A closer look from Cologne revealed to the Elder that Saturn wasn't quite glowing, but more her surface was disassociating into a close cloud of particles. "I cannot maintain this power for long at present. This host is... growing. And will one day be able to hold me fully. Until that day, she shall hold only the slightest of my essence." With that, Saturn's glow abruptly ceased, and the girl dropped back onto her heels, the first time that Cologne had realised that the more powerful Saturn hadn't been quite standing, but rather floating with only the tips of her toes touching the floor.

"Is... is that enough?" Saturn asked, panting, leaning on her glaive to stay upright. It was the first time she'd tried that. While it wasn't the greatest of combat moves, it might be something she could try expanding upon for future use.

The Chinese Elder nodded. "Agreed. I will train you, as you requested."

"You don't... ask for proof?"

"This was thousands of years ago, child. What proof would you have today? Aside from your actions. And those of son in... Ranma. There is also the point that they are just legends. Tales told from long ago." Cologne recalled Saturn's words. "Or so I had thought, before today." She gathered herself again, recovering for the second time in as many minutes. "I will come by your dorm tonight. I will stay for the two weeks. Shampoo can look after the restaurant while I am gone; it will give her good experience. Will it be all of you that will be training?"

"Just five of us in particular," Hotaru said, dropping her transformation and allowing her fuku to disassemble in a cloud of ribbons. She felt tired, at least as tired as she had in the days before Ranma started training her, building up her strength and endurance. "But the other two of us may join in from time to time. While we won't be fighting... it will not do us any harm."

Cologne's eyes narrowed, then she smiled widely. "Then it is decided! I shall be by at seven this evening. Have the others ready. Hotaru nodded her agreement, and turned to leave. "One point. If you are intending to fight someone, you shouldn't do something that leaves you in such a depowered state. Always have strength to fall back on. That's your first lesson; I give it now, ahead of time, because you never know what may be ahead of you."

* * *

Usagi awoke, her head aching from behind where it had been hit by... a suitcase, apparently. A heavy suitcase, she realised as she sat up. There was a key in the lock on the front of the case, which upon removal appeared to be very old, with a rose design as one end, and old straight teeth poking down from the other.

"Where did this come from?" she asked herself, looking at the smashed window, and then down to the ground below. She couldn't see anyone who must have thrown this into her window, so eventually she sat on her bed, rubbing the huge bump on the back of her head while eyeing the key in her hand. She slipped it into the case's keyhole, and turned the key. The lock clicked, but nothing else happened. Usagi lifted the lid, and found a doll, lying on its side in an almost-foetal position. It was dressed in an ornate red dress, with a bonnet covering the front of its long blond hair.

Attached to it was a note. "Please wind." Usagi read the words aloud, thinking there must be some kind of significance to them, but no matter which way she turned them, the words meant the same thing. "Wind what? My clock?" She glanced at it beside her bed; _no good, it's digital._ "Wind what? Maybe I'm thinking wrong. Maybe this is Korean, and it's wind, not wind... but... _please break wind_? No... I'm sure nothing'll happen if I fart. Maybe..." Usagi developed a look of cunning on her face. "Maybe that's what they want me to think!"

Several minutes of effort over the doll proved her wrong. "Then what?" she asked as she waved her hand in front of her nose. She turned the doll over, and found a keyhole on her back. Usagi blushed mightily. "We tell no one of what happened here," she said the wall, seriously. It looked like it fitted the key from the case, so Usagi removed it from the case, and slotted it into the back of the doll. Once in snugly, she began winding the key until something clicked inside the doll, and it opened its eyes.

A moment later, it sat up in Usagi's lap. "Wow! What great... technology," Usagi's voice trailed off. The doll looked old-fashioned, and probably ran on clockwork or something. The doll turned its head and looked up at Usagi.

"Who are you?" the doll asked.

Usagi dropped the doll and screamed, climbing backwards on the bed. "I've hit my head and I'm dreaming, I've hit my head and –"

The doll stood up, patting down its dress. "Why did you drop me? You really are a clumsy partner. You really should hold me better." The doll climbed onto the bed, clambered over Usagi and dropped her backside into the crook of Usagi's elbow. The young woman froze as the doll nestled into position. "There. That's better now, isn't it?"

Usagi gibbered. "I've hit my head and I'm dreaming."

The doll sighed. This was going to be tiring. "My name is Shinku. I'm one of Rozen's Maidens. I am to be your –"

"_You're a doll, you can't talk, you can't be real, Rei was right, all this no-sex is making me lose my mind, I –"_

"Oh do me quiet. And make me some tea."

Usagi calmed for a moment. "Tea? _At a time like this?_"

"Yes, tea. It is good for stressful situations like this. A very European thing to do." Shinku fixed Usagi in a baleful stare. "I want some tea. Something nice." Seizing the opportunity, Usagi placed the doll on her bed, and slipped off to bolt for the door. "Ahem. Aren't you forgetting something?"

Usagi stopped, and turned back, her face with a rictus-like grin. "Nooo...?"

"Yes, you are." Shinku lifted her arms to Usagi. "You must take me with you."

"Nooooo..."

* * *

Overseeing the damage to Thunderbird 2, Ranma sighed. "This is gonna take at least two weeks ta fix." Without saying anything, he could feel Ayumu's pride behind him. A quick glance confirmed she looked as vacant as ever where she stood with two other monsters of a similar apparent age. He shook his head. "I don't know what to do here."

"We can fix the pipes, General Ranma sir. Like bagpipes. Bagpipes are hard to blow, I know, I had a chance to do that once in school at Osaka. I was once blowing –"

Ranma cut her off with a raised hand asking her to stop. "I don't want to know what you were blowing. Please, spare me what you were blowing."

"I blew a tuba. It made a big sound. Oompah oompah..."

"You scare me sometimes."

"She scares me," one of the other two monsters said, adjusting her glasses so they caught the overhead light better and hid her reptilian eyes. "But she is like the cat and I; we all do what we must."

Ranma gave a hard look at the three girls. Again, as on the bridge of the battleship earlier, he had the feeling that Ayumu was pushing him at something, at rescuing the girls trapped in this Battle Royale show. But if Yoshihiro should be wanting that project to go ahead... but then, if he wanted it stopped, why not just stop it? Unless he felt in some way that negated his power. Or...

Or if he wasn't sure he was able to make the decision, one way or the other.

Ayumu had shown him the way. She had given him the excuse to vanish for as long as it took. But Ranma had to plan how best to vanish while not appearing to vanish. This might take some thought...

* * *

Evangeline stalked out of the treeline, heading directly for the formerly-abandoned school building. She could sense Negi inside, his feelings chaotic and uncertain of how to act. She snorted; give him an up-front threat and he was all about blowing the magic wide open. Give him something that could hurt people in ways he couldn't stop at once, and he was frozen with the options of which way to go. If he was going to be anything like his father, he needed to learn to act first and think of escape routes from the messes he'd invariably end up in later.

Chachamaru stepped from the trees behind her as Evangeline started across the small field. Soldiers gathered in front of them, ready to fire. With a wave of her hand and a spoken word, Evangeline ripped the rifles away from the soldiers.

* * *

Back in Mahora, the school's headmaster was coming to the end of his strength. For Evangeline to have been able to attend the class trip to Kyoto, he'd had to stamp a permission form every five seconds. Unfortunately, now he'd been at it for two days straight, and he was no longer as young as he used to be.

First, he grew slow. Then, trying to speed up, he stamped one form twice. Realising his mistake, the headmaster tried to stamp another form quickly, and succeeded, but then felt the room swim sideways.

At which point his body gave up temporarily, and he toppled to his side for three days straight, sleeping off his exhaustion.

* * *

Evangeline's body arced with pain from the top of her head to the tips of her toes. Magical energies coursed through her form. Chachamaru reached out to help her, but by this time the soldiers were regaining their weapons, and now her master's safety became Chachamaru's priority. She reached to grab Evangeline, her boosters unfolding from her back and burst through her school shirt.

Before the gynoid could take hold of Evangeline, the dark Doll Master seemed to freeze in agony, then vanished, air rushing into the void left by her departure. For a moment, Chachamaru was stunned, but the sound of rifle safeties being flicked off brought Chachamaru back to herself. She engaged protective programming, and jetted up into the air before ducking back into the cover of the trees.

Negi would have to wait for a more opportune time, but for Chachamaru, time was running out. She needed a mage to wind her daily, and aside from Negi, there were very few other magic users whom Chachamaru might be able to make use of. The more people died on the island, the fewer would be able to wind her up and allow her to be of some use to Negi when he made his move, or her master, if she returned from wherever she had gone.

* * *

Back at Mahora Academy, Evangeline shook the headmaster. "Wake up, you old fool! Wake up!" But no matter how hard she shook him and what magic she tossed at him, the headmaster was oblivious.

SAILOR MOON SAYS:

I'm making a habit of this, heh. Well, here's chapter 5. Hope you all enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed writing it. The story's moving a little slower than I thought it would during this part of the series, but the characters are making their moves and their positions known. Next time: another of the maidens shows up at the Ai Sou. And also, training for the senshi begins.


	6. Chapter 6

**DISCLAIMER:** Relatively standard stuff. Existing characters are properties of the people who made them up. Mitsuki, and several other characters are mine, and so's the story, hence ownership and copyright of them belongs to me. Contact me at my usual email address if you want permission to use anything I've written for whatever purposes. As per usual, I'm having formatting ripped out on upload, and now having line breaks introduced for no apparent reason. I apologise in advance for any formatting errors you may meet.

**Justice**

By

Raymond Cooper

Last Kiss

Seven PM was a time the senshi were normally finished dinner, but alternately horrified and fascinated by what was happening on television with Sakura TV's Battle Royale programme, the women hadn't yet eaten. Makoto had the meal ready to go, she just needed more than a few moments between horrific revelations to actually cook the meal.

Earlier in the day, they had seen the footage of the woman in fetish gear vanishing after assaulting the soldiers guarding the school buildings from the students, and the girl behind her sprout rocket engines and jet off back into the surrounding forest. While the senshi knew magic existed in some form or another throughout the world, it often wasn't something that was spoken openly of.

In fact, there was that whole deal with the young, sexy physicist Ueda and his sometimes companion who actively sought out public claims of magic and debunked them in the manner of the historical figure Houdini. A number of others also hunted supernatural phenomenon and proved they were false, like those American kids Mitsuki had talked about earlier in the evening when this topic had originally come up.

"I like their dog," she had said, before describing how they systematically proved every sighting of a ghost or monster in the continental United States of America was actually some disgruntled employee, failed treasure hunter or spiteful family member out for number one.

Still, in a country full of magical girls and boys, as well as the occasional stranger giant monster, Japan seemed to ignore the mystical with startling regularity.

"As with the current backlash against ourselves, we seem to consider ignoring that which is different and shouldn't be ignored," Ami hypothesised. "It would certainly explain a lot about why we don't all have flying cars and teleportation systems integrated into every house when you consider some of the things we have encountered."

The television again played footage of the third, perhaps fourth depending on the unconfirmed status of Evangeline A.K. McDowell, person to die that day. Just before five PM, one of the students – a Mana Tatsumiya – had managed to kill the younger of the Narutaki twins. Fumika hadn't stood a chance, she hadn't even heard Mana sneak up on her. "Perhaps," the presenter Big Man added on the earlier broadcast, "this was a mercy killing, as after the death of her older sister, poor Fumika seemed to have lost the will to play the game."

"Interesting choice of wording," Ami commented. "It makes it sound like she had a choice in playing this... _game_."

"What had these kids done to deserve this?" Rei asked at one point, watching the slow-motion breaking of the young girl's neck with amplified sound catching every bone-wrenching grind, then the sharp snap played back at ten times the normal volume, at ten times slower than the actual move had taken.

"No one deserves this," Usagi replied, stroking her new doll moodily. The doll, Rei realised, looked annoyed.

_Even inanimate objects could be annoyed with Usagi,_ Rei thought to herself – the only amusing thought she'd had all day. Her classes had been full of people talking about Battle Royale – it wasn't something she'd been able to get away from. She guessed that others had to be similarly affected by the events, but as she had become accustomed to over her years in Tokyo, the people hid their feelings to go along with the gestalt herd. Few spoke out; those that did were ridiculed and shamed into at least publicly accepting it. Those who stayed silent were ignored and their silence was taken as unspoken approval of the actions.

But the senshi watched anyway. Rei supposed this was what all of Japan was doing, watching in horrified silence, but she really couldn't say for certain. Certainly, none of the senshi were for this travesty on television. No one she called a friend was for Battle Royale.

But Ranma... no, he was gone. Still, Rei couldn't help but glance at the chair he'd be in when they all watched television. No one was sitting in it now.

Or shouldn't have been, rather. Instead, there was a small ghoul, a woman so old she looked as if she'd been left in the sun far, far too long and had wrinkled like bad fruit. She held across her knees a gnarled wooden staff, her eyes flicking around the room in partial nervousness, but also drumming into herself _who these people were, _and what they thought of the events on the screen.

Rei couldn't help herself, and jumped. "Who are you?" she managed in a controlled tone that was only slightly higher in pitch than she'd been expecting.

Usagi's doll spat out a mouthful of tea all over the carpet that Rei hadn't seen Usagi feed it.

The senshi turned and jumped almost as one; Hotaru didn't move. "Seven PM on the dot," she said simply.

With a moment to actually look at the elderly woman, Rei recognised her from Nerima – Shampoo's grandmother, or great-grandmother, or something. Either way, she could be bad news.

"She hasn't come to fight," Hotaru added, motioning the senshi to sit down.

"At least, not yet," Cologne added.

"She's come to train us all. We need her help," Hotaru added. "I can't train you all nearly as well as Ranma could, and Cologne is a better teacher than he ever was." The subtle stress on the word "better" stood out to the senshi – true or not, Hotaru was playing up to Cologne for some reason. Cologne noticed, but as no one brought it up, all she did was narrow her eyes at the teenager. "We need this. I need you all to do this, and excel. We have one opportunity to make this right, and if we blow it, it's all over, and we can say goodbye to whatever hopes and dreams we had for the future, because there will be no future. So, for the five of you who will make this new team, I'm wanting you to give it your best and not fail. I spoke with Keitaro earlier today, and he advised that our giant robots will be ready in two weeks."

"Two weeks seems an awfully long time for that Kaolla Su girl," Ami replied.

"Keitaro also said that Kaolla had gotten lost in some work. Literally lost," Hotaru hurried to clarify. "They're trying to find her now. But it has put a delay in their construction."

"We get giant robots?" Usagi asked, eyes wide and shining, hands clasped.

Her doll looked up at her, annoyed. "If you have time to moon over actions and items you have no hope of attaining, you have time to make me another cup of tea." Usagi ignored the doll, until the doll reached up and grabbed her ear in a vice-like grip. "Tea, slave."

"Yes, master," Usagi howled, and leapt from her chair for the kitchen. The senshi watched her go in silence.

Then: "I didn't know she knew ventriloquism."

"I don't think she knows much at all," sniffed Rei.

"But that was awfully good." Ami's attention stayed on Usagi's retreating form for a moment before turning back to Cologne and Hotaru.

"Tonight, I want to see your dorm. Your rooms. Your kitchen. And then I need to see where you are up to. There are things I can help you with only if I know your current level of martial arts prowess, and also that knowledge would enable me to better prepare your training course."

"Of course,' Hotaru agreed, and led Cologne from the room.

* * *

Mana lurked a little in the forest near where she had killed Fumika. She hadn't intended to kill the younger of the Naruktaki twins, in fact she'd intended to leave Fumika as fodder for one of the other weak girls, to toughen them up a little and make them feel either overconfident or suicidal. In either situation, it meant that there would be one less potential threat to Mana on the island.

For a moment, with her hands either side of Fumika's head, she had considered not doing this, of finding Kaede and Evangeline and Setsuna and the others who might be able to assist in a breakout from the island, but then the part of Mana's brain that had grown up around combat, duty, death and killing took over and laughed loudly in the face of that more innocent version of herself, and she had _twisted_ and by then it was all over anyway.

Now, she was near Fumika's body, mostly to see if anyone would come close to it. Maybe it was stupid, she reflected, but she was motionless and silent – so much so that a bird had hopped through her hair a few minutes earlier pecking for insects. Mana hadn't so much as blinked.

_There._

A near-silent footstep. Someone creeping stealthily through the undergrowth, this was what Mana had waited to see. Who came first. If it was someone weak, then Mana would act. But the amount of noise made by the person... it wasn't someone who'd never walked quietly before. It wasn't any of the cheerleaders, nor any other of the combat newbies Mana could think of. Asuna, for instance, would just stomp her way through the forest.

No, it was someone experienced, someone good. And there. A sandalled foot touched down in front of her. Kaede, Mana realised with a start, was less than a foot in front of her eyes.

Thankfully, Mana was fully camouflaged in the ground, but Kaede was very good as well. And while Mana really did want to go head-to-head with Kaede, this wasn't the time to find out who was better.

For a start, Mana had no guns.

Her close combat skills were good, but she wouldn't like to bet solely on them in a fight with a trained ninja.

A heartbeat later, Kaede's other foot came down further away, and the ninja moved off, circling the clearing that Fumika's body lay in. After the ninja had moved off, Mana gave Kaede an hour to get clear before moving backwards in a slow wriggle to remove herself from the area, satisfied the ninja hadn't seen her.

She never looked up, though, and thus missed Kaede sitting in the tree above Mana's hiding place, where she had been frowning since she had watched her classmate assassinate another classmate. But at least Mana didn't realise Kaede was using shadow clones of herself on the island. That much could come in handy in the future.

What exactly had been in Fumika's backpack, Kaede wondered. Mana had taken something out, and then stuffed the item into her pants pockets, so whatever it was had been small, but Kaede hadn't so much caught a glimpse of it.

Worried, she patted the gun that was safely in her own backpack. While she didn't like the thought of guns being used, or of handling them herself, she thought her having the gun was a far better idea than hiding it somewhere where Mana could potentially find and take it. She stayed in her tree all night, to give Mana time to get away. Sadly, it would mean leaving other students unprotected, but she thought Asuna and Setsuna would at least be helpful in that regard. In the meantime, she had to plan what her next moves would be.

* * *

Ranma sat quietly in his quarters, a stolen television on mute. What was happening on the island was gaining steam, and the show itself was growing in popularity. If the host Big Man was to be believed, Sakura TV had been inundated with offers to take the show worldwide, but Ranma thought the rest of the world would likely either make the show a lot safer, or just wouldn't have anything to do with it.

Well, maybe in China they would, but Ranma had seen some weird stuff in China that made him think they could just put cameras through the Amazon village and voila! It would be an instant ratings success with the literal bloodsports, particularly with the occasional male and female intruder to the village.

But the smile that thought got him made him feel wrong. Just... wrong. He didn't know, maybe he was too old, or all that time spent abroad on training trips as a kid had damaged him, but the show didn't appeal to him at all.

It was something that both worried and relieved him. He'd thought that being a Dark General, his way of thinking would change, but it didn't, not really. He had more knowledge of things, he had abilities he could previously only dream of – and maybe he was a little harder in how he thought of people, but really, he was the same. Maybe to someone who hadn't been as powerful as him in the start, when they were changed, the rush of power would alter how one felt. Maybe it was to do with him not being from this Dark Moon Kingdom that Yoshihiro, or part of Yoshihiro, had come from. Maybe it was... he didn't know. He didn't feel evil, and the fact he thought Umiko was being completely evil with her plans reassured him he wasn't that fundamentally changed from his original self. That was a relief.

The worry came from the fact that he could change and possibly not be aware of it. That thought still frightened him in the middle of the night. For his plan to succeed, Ranma needed to be Ranma.

But it was also a little confusing, still. Ayumu had inferred that Yoshihiro would ignore Ranma's actions in this event. Really, what did that mean? Would the Master condone the actions Ranma took if he took them openly? Would he condone them if he did it covertly, undermining Umiko's attempts at power through behind-the-scenes jockeying? Or was Yoshihiro really completely unable to make a decision on this matter?

Perhaps, Ranma reflected, it was something of the man he must have been prior to becoming a Dark Kingdom lord, or king, or whatever. He was something far beyond a General or a senshi or anything else Ranma had come to know in the last year. Quite what he was, he didn't know, but there was the sense of something human about him. Something... that was disturbingly human. And maybe his indecision, or covert decision, was related to that part of him. Maybe.

It was a difficult time, Ranma had to admit. This was so hard a decision to make. Yes, he had the perfect disguise, if Yoshihiro couldn't see through it. There was no guarantee he couldn't, though, or hadn't previously.

He hadn't been directly exposed to Ranma as Sailor Ceres.

He had planned to keep that identity a secret for a while, hold onto it as his trump card, but perhaps this was the time to use it instead.

As Ayumu had suggested, it would be two weeks before Thunderbird 2 was ready to fly again, and his engineering teams were working hell to leather on building new TerrorHawks, so Ranma could afford to spend some time away from the base. But how to explain his absence away?

Eventually, he summoned Ayumu, who slipgated into his quarters silently. As soon as she had fully materialised, her vacant expression was turned fully on Ranma, her smile as wide as her eyes. In her hand, she held a steaming cup of coffee.

"Ayumu. I... uh, I'm going to be going out for a little while. For a – a walk. I –"

"Did you know coffee grows on a plant?" Ayumu asked, vacantly. "It's a seed. Like a random number generator. Speaking of generators, Koyomi says it will take two weeks to rebuild the fuel line because it took the primary drive coil generator out." Ayumu's roundabout way of speaking still caught Ranma off-guard from time to time, even if he was getting used to her. "Speaking of out, this coffee is for you :D" She held the cup of steaming coffee up to Ranma, who took the mug gingerly expecting it to be hot.

But it wasn't, not at all. It was at room temperature, nothing special. Ranma looked closely at the surface of the coffee; while it looked like a liquid, in reality it was just a well-disguised surface with a vapour jet escaping gently from the top. He looked up at Ayumu. "I... I can't drink this," he said, stupidly.

":D"

"Um... Ayumu... aren't I supposed to drink coffee? Even if it more is an adult drink..." Ranma regarded the solidified cup of coffee, and took a smell – it certainly smelt like proper coffee, but that seemed to be something in the vapour wafting up from the surface rather than from the actual surface.

"All-day heated coffee. Let's people think you're in the office when you're not :D"

"All-day... Ayumu?"

"Put it at your desk," she sighed, her vacant expression disappearing for the time it took to slap her face in exasperation. "People will think you're in this worldspace. The cup also has a small motor and recognition sensor, so while no one's around, it will change place on your desk as if you've moved it." The vacant expression showed up again, like a curtain dropping on a brightly-lit stage.

"Ah. I guess that works as well."

"Koyomi wants me to go back so she can yell at me some more." Ayumu folded her arms out in front of her. "Oh! Bring me some sata andagi while you're away!" She nodded her head and blinked her eyes, slipgating out of the room again.

Right. Ranma looked down at the mug of coffee. "Science. Working so I don't have to," he said to himself with a wry grin. Well, now to work. He had his excuse, although if someone went looking for him it could be hard to explain, and he had his disguise – now he just needed his escape route. Before he could leave, he had to leave in a manner that wouldn't register anywhere, and would need to use the same route to come back. It would easy enough to do, to change his energy patterns enough that no one would recognise it as their General Ranma, just time consuming. He sat down to meditate, to begin the process.

* * *

Usagi had her face screwed up in concentration over her homework texts when Rei burst into the room, waving a piece of paper around as if it was evidence of a deadly crime. "What do you think you're doing?" she shrieked at Usagi, who blinked. Her doll, Shinku, regally sipping tea on Usagi's bed, spared the raven-haired young woman a withering look.

"I'm doing my homework!" Usagi shrieked back. "Which is hard enough without all these constant interruptions!" She shot the doll a disgusted look. "You all think I don't do any, and I do! I work very hard! I –"

"I mean this!" Rei brandished the paper under Usagi's nose.

"What's this?" Usagi asked, taking the paper from Rei's hands and perusing it. "To wind or not to wind?" The burst of inspiration lit up Usagi's face. "Oh, you really want to tick 'wind' on this one. Here, use my pen." Usagi handed her most prized possession – a ballpoint Mamoru had picked up and sent her from some amusement park – to Rei, who, under Usagi's urging, ticked the 'wind' box. "Now we just put it in my drawer –" which they did, "- and now..." Usagi stood up, and with her hands on Rei's shoulders, moved Rei to stand in front of her still broken window with her back to it. Usagi stepped back two steps closer to her bed and the window on the other exterior wall. "Now, just stand there."

"Why here? And what's that whistling?"

Usagi could hear the whistling as well, building as something hurtled towards the building. She watched Rei, an evil smile on her face. Building, building –

The window behind Usagi smashed, and a suitcase crashed into the back of her head, throwing her to the floor. Rei jumped forward at once to make sure Usagi was fine, but she was already sitting up rubbing her head. "What?" the dazed senshi asked, looking around her room at broken glass before settling on the suitcase that had thumped her soundly.

"What is that?" Rei asked, a little surprised now she was sure Usagi was fine. It looked like a normal suitcase, but of a slightly old style, with a lock and key near the handle. Rei stepped forward to examine the case closer, but could see no discernable details that would suggest where the suitcase had come from.

"Open it," Usagi grimaced, shooting her doll a vicious look. The doll merely sipped her tea with its eyes closed.

"That is one creepy doll," Rei muttered under her breath, before lowering herself to unlock the suitcase. Upon opening it, she found another doll, in a pink dress with a lot of petticoats and other undergarments, and strawberry-blonde hair. It was curled up as if sleeping on its side, a thumb in its mouth. Hesitating, Rei eventually reached in and pulled the doll out, turning it over in her hands wondering exactly what the doll was.

"The key goes in there," Usagi pointed out helpfully, almost fully back to her old self.

Rei removed the key from the suitcase lock, and slipped it into the doll's back, and hesitated again before turning the key soundly in the lock. She wound it several times before the doll jerked in her hands, removed its thumb from its mouth, and turned its head to glance up at Rei.

"You don't look dead," the doll said.

Usagi's doll stopped sipping her tea long enough to say, "This wasn't the girl you hit."

"Then who did I..." the doll in pink turned to look at Usagi, now peering in close. "She doesn't look dead, either."

Sighing, Usagi's doll put her tea down, and hopped off the bed. She tugged on Rei's pants to put the other doll down, and when a silently surprised Rei did so, Usagi's doll busily prettied the other doll up with practised hands. "She is very hard to kill. I believe her head is made of wood." As an example, she rapped Rei's doll's head with a quick move.

"Wait... wait just a minute," Rei said, getting back towards solid ground. "I don't believe this. Who are you?"

"I," Usagi's doll said, turning her withering gaze now on Rei, "am Shinku, the fifth of Rozen's Maidens. This little one is Hina Ichigo. Little Strawberry has been through a lot in her time. I would appreciate it a lot if you took good, kind care of her." That said, she moved back to Usagi's bed, but couldn't climb up. Annoyed, she returned to Usagi's side and tugged on Usagi's arm. "I need to be up there," she said, pointing at Usagi's bed. Wordlessly, but with plenty of eye-rolling, Usagi lifted the doll onto her bed, where she continued sipping her tea as if nothing had happened.

"Usagi? What is this?"

"They're just dolls, Rei, like special dolls. Magical dolls. They live in flying suitcases," Usagi added, rubbing the back of her head again.

Rei looked at the motion, then glanced down at the suitcase, before looking at the two broken windows. "Wait, you _knew_ that was going to happen. You wanted to kill me?"

"Not kill you, after all, it didn't kill me."

"Yes, but you're like a cockroach. You'd need a nuclear bomb to kill you!"

"Waaah! That's so cruel, Rei! I thought we were friends?"

"We should be calling you Baka Pink, not –" Rei broke off as Usagi clapped a hand over Rei's mouth and dragged her out into the hallway. Once she was sure they were far enough away from prying eyes and listening ears, Usagi let go. "What'd you do that for?" Rei demanded.

"Just... just be careful what you say around them. Okay? They're great toys. Shinku is amazing. But I've never seen a doll like this before. If they could be turned against us, I don't know what could happen to us if they know all about us."

"You had Shinku down in the lounge before."

"I mean things like identities. Plans, that kind of thing."

"Usagi," Rei said, honestly surprised. "You're usually not this suspicious of people. What's wrong?" Rei sucked in a breath. "What, what have you done with our Usagi?"

The blonde looked annoyed. "Rei, I'm serious. I'm all about trust, and right now, we need a lot of it in a lot of people to make our future happen. But these dolls... they're weird. Shinku... kind of worries me. I don't think they're dangerous, but I'm just keeping an eye on them for now. Please, do the same with yours."

Rei nodded. "Just don't try to kill me again."

"I wasn't trying to kill you! Well, not much," Usagi added under her breath with a ghost of a smile, knowing the other woman had heard.

"Usagi!" Rei shrieked, before rubbing her knuckles briskly through Usagi's hair.

* * *

"What's Negi doing?" Asuna growled, her eyes darting this way and that in the darkened cave. While well-shielded from casual observers outside, the cave entrance could be easily found if one were looking for a hiding place. "That short brat should be here, now, riding in on his –"

"Ahem," reminded Nodoka quietly.

"- motorcycle and... motorcycle... I could hve said 'white stallion'," Asuna continued, pinching the bridge of her nose. She had eight other girls with her, eight of the students from class 3A of Mahora Academy. Not all of them knew about magic, super martial arts, ninjas, robots or anything.

Thankfully, Asuna did, but it made it hard for her to curse their teacher when he could have just swooped in on his staff and flown them all out of here. Was he really that concerned about revealing magic to the world? Asuna didn't think so. She thought it was more perhaps he was still in shock, but she had no way of knowing that. Still, she knew he didn't stand around doing nothing if there were people in danger. No, all bets were off, and it was left to Asuna and the others to later explain it to the other students. "Oh no, it was just a play," or even "It was all done with CGI!"

Never mind the fact that CGI didn't actually work in a live environment, only in recorded formats like books, movies or television. People just never saw what they actually saw, only what they wanted to see.

Nodoka also looked concerned beside Asuna, but she was new to this whole magic thing. She'd had a pactio performed, and received her magical artefact – a mind-reading diary, as it turned out – but she hadn't yet had a lot of combat experience. Most of what she had done was in response to the attacks on Konoka in Kyoto a few days before by the Kyoto mages wanting to stir up trouble between the Kansai and Kyoto Magic Associations, and as yet she didn't know many limitations of her diary, nor could be counted on in the heat of battle to react properly.

There was a noise at the front of the cave, of vegetation being moved aside. It wasn't a stealthy move, and indeed moments later Chachamaru was dragged through the opening by Ku Fei.

Konoka rushed up to Chachamaru, and lifted her hand, checking automatically for a pulse. There was nothing in her wrist, and for a moment Konoka thought she was dead, but Satomi pushed past her and ran her hands over the gynoid's body. "She doesn't seem to be damaged in any way," the junior mad scientist muttered, before she slipped Chachameru's shirt off without a second thought. Asuna made an angry, spluttering sound, but stopped as Satomi opened a compartment and began fiddling around inside. Finally, Satomi shook her head, and leaned back. She sighed before speaking. "Are there any mages here?"

Asuna, Konoka and Setsuna looked elsewhere innocently.

"Mahora has the highest concentration of mages in Japan outside of the central Tokyo wards and the compounds of the Kansai and Kyoto Magic Associations. Statistically, we have at least two mages in the class besides Evangeline." Satomi looked at everyone in turn, and stopped on Ku Fei, who wasn't able to look innocent at all and had a cat-like expression on her face. "Ku?"

"I know nothing!" Ku said, folding her arms defiantly and daring Satomi to prove otherwise. Without speaking, Satomi stood, her arms outstretched with her fingers making tickling motions. Ku stepped back; the pose of the hands wasn't the threat, the fact that Satomi looked deadly serious scared her more, but a moment later Satomi's fingers made contact and Ku dissolved into uncontrolled laughter.

"Wait," Asuna broke in, holding up a hand. Satomi turned her head, still tickling Ku. "Why do you want to know?"

"Chachamaru requires a mage to wind her key every twenty four hours. Without that, she can't operate. I think the situation we find ourselves in requires a fully developed combat analogue gynoid for protection, don't you?"

Understanding maybe five words in the sentence, Asuna nodded dumbly. Konoka stepped forward after waving off Setsuna's cautioning hand. "I can wind Chachamaru," she said. Satomi stopped tickling Ku, who fell to the ground coughing from laughing so much.

"Good. Eva had the primary key, but I always keep one for backup." She held up a clockwork-style key on front of Konoka's face, giving a strong glare at Konoka to impress its importance on the other girl. "This is my only other key. I want you to hold tightly onto this, don't let it out of your sight, and stick with Chachamaru. No matter what happens, stay by her side. And wind her every twenty four hours."

"Mage?" came a voice from the back of the cave. "Like a wizard?"

"No, like... yes, like a wizard," Asuna corrected herself. "There's a whole world going on around the one you know, Yuna. A... a magical world. That makes it sound so lame."

Behind Asuna, Konoka had wound Chachamaru, who was now sitting up, and buttoning her shirt back up calmly. Satomi ran another quick diagnostic before rocking back on her heels and asking, "Where's Eva?"

"The mistress vanished."

"What?" This from Asuna, who had recently helped fight Evangeline back at Mahora. She had taken pactio with Negi at that time to help defend him from Chachamaru and Evangeline, and stop Evangeline from draining his blood. "Why'd she take off at a time like this? That stupid vampire, I'll kill her..."

"It was not the mistress's fault. Something magical interfered as we attempted to retrieve Negi-sensei from the deserted school."

"Magical?" echoed Setsuna. "Wait, hadn't Eva said back in Kyoto that she was only able to stay outside the school grounds while the headmaster stamped permission slips?"

"I have drawn the same conclusion," Chachamaru confirmed to Setsuna. "With the stamping stopped, it may take some time for the headmaster to arrange the correct magical conditions to return the mistress to this location, if it is even possible. My internal chronometers show that over a day has passed since the mistress vanished; if she was able to be back easily, I believe she would be here now." Chachamaru shrugged, a human gesture. "As she is not apparently back at this time, it is apparent the mistress may be unable to return right now."

"So where do we go from here?" Konoka asked.

"That's easy," Asuna replied, smiling widely. "We get our teacher, we rescue the others, we escape this crazy place, then we go back to school and get some help to make sure this _never happens again._"

"That sounds like a good idea," Konoka agreed.

"But first," Chachamaru interjected, "we will need the help of some others to help us retrieve Negi-sensei."

* * *

Back at Mahora, Evangeline waited impatiently, knocking back alcohol while sitting next to the bed in the nurse's office where the headmaster currently lay. "You're a stupid fool, wake up, we don't have time for this," she would say in between mouthfuls of liquor. Empty bottles piled up beside her. "Konoemon, you're an idiot." She finished off another bottle, and tossed it aside.

She had been here for two days now.

She paused in mid-pour of another glass. "Wait, no, I'm the idiot!" she shouted out loud, before realising what she'd just said. She quickly finished her new glass, then tried to pick the headmaster up, but found her arms were too short to reach fully under him. Grimacing, she hunted around the office, and eventually found a packaged vial of red and blue pills. They looked familiar, and uncapping the vial and taking a whiff, Eva had it confirmed – they were age-changing pills. She quickly pulled out a red pill, and in a moment she had aged half a dozen years. It ruined her clothing, but more to the point, her arms were long enough to reach under the headmaster and pick him up.

A few moments later, Eva was out the window and into the breeze, headed for her cottage on the grounds. Once there, she headed down into her basement, to her resort facility in a bottle. A day there would take an hour in the real world... at best, the headmaster would recover from his exhaustion in the next few hours of real time, and she could find some way of getting back into the Battle Royale game.

She activated the resort, and vanished within it with the headmaster. Hopefully, she'd be back shortly. Now, it was just a waiting game.

**SAILOR MOON SAYS: **Okay, here's chapter 6. Been a little busy lately, so sorry about this wait. At least it wasn't as bad as it was before chapter 3...

There's been two attempts on Usagi now, will there be more? Ranma gets into the swing of things. Evangeline also has to find a way of getting back into the game.


	7. Chapter 7

**DISCLAIMER:** Relatively standard stuff. Existing characters are properties of the people who made them up. Mitsuki, and several other characters are mine, and so's the story, hence ownership and copyright of them belongs to me. Contact me at my usual email address if you want permission to use anything I've written for whatever purposes. As per usual, I'm having formatting ripped out on upload, and now having line breaks introduced for no apparent reason. I apologise in advance for any formatting errors you may meet.

**Justice**

By

Raymond Cooper

All The Things She Said

_Hello from Cyberspace!_ Announced the famous net idol, Chiu. In the video clip on her homepage, Chiu spun around in a delightful dress made from grasses and flax leaves, some thicker, leafier leaves from trees covering her more vital areas. Her hair was tied back in a series of buns with thinly-striped flax that had been platted into a cord, and she didn't have her usual perfect makeup job or photoshocked glamour, but her viewers supposed that was because she was currently on a safari on a remote tropical island.

_Chiu is very happy where she is right now. _That's right, Chisame thought as she twirled and giggled, she didn't quite want to panic anyone just yet. Nor did she want to reveal that the famous net idol Chiu was stuck on a deserted island, with soldiers standing guard around the only point of civilisation in sight, with orders to shoot to kill if the island's inhabitants came close, nor that her classmates had all been armed and sent to kill one another.

But privately, deep down, she wondered more if she didn't want her fans to start wondering if the sour-faced girl in the thick glasses who'd received the gift of a laptop as a weapon in Battle Royale was their goddess. If she made it off this island... and she was smart enough to know that sooner or later, someone would likely start offing the other students, and she would be an easy target... then she could work to blow the whole thing open. But not yet, not yet. And she didn't want stalkers following her out of cosplay if by some chance she did make it off the island.

_Today, I snorkelled in the lagoon! Chiu doesn't have a digicam with her though, so it was very sad. Chiu was very cute! _She gave a nervous giggle and blushed on cue. _You'll just have to image Chiu snorkelling. And remember,_ she added, _Chiu forgot to pack her clothes! Just so she could bring her laptop and keep everyone entertained! Isn't that nice of Chiu?_ Yes, yes it damned well was. And if it wasn't, the thought of their beloved Chiu-chan naked, frolicking in the clear blue waters of this mythical lagoon would be plenty.

In reality, Chisame had worn her school swimsuit under her uniform on the way back from Kyoto when she had found they would be stuck on a bus all the way back to Mahora – the idea being she could duck into the bathroom from time to time, strip down to it and run water over the thick material to cool down from time to time – and while at the time it had seemed like a great idea, actually being trapped on the bus in what grew to be a sweltering heat made her plan seem stupid, if only because the material had made her hot and scratchy in places Chisame didn't like being hot and scratchy in.

So now, Chisame was stuck on an island with no comforting cotton underwear, just a hot, itchy lycra swimsuit that worked out fairly well when she needed to get into the nearby river for something to eat. She'd found that either the fish here were really dumb, or were as mesmerised by her presence as her online fans were, because she could just about catch them without effort in her hands. She could then use matches she found in her rations to cook them at night, in a nearby cave she'd found. Her swimsuit, though, dried out very quickly, and she didn't feel as vulnerable wearing that in the water than she would have in her underwear... or skinny dipping. She repressed a snort and kept the breezy smile on her face for the webcam at that thought. If only her fans could see her without makeup and without clothing, shivering in that cool mountain stream...

Well, she had to face it, it would still be more of a real naked woman than they'd ever seen before, and they'd likely tear each other apart for the right to watch.

Funnily enough, with her fear of appearing before anyone naked, all she really had protecting her modesty in this Chiu costume she'd made was a few leaves and grasses tying everything together. If something dried too much, or she got too energetic... voila, her fans got more than they were expecting. Thankfully, the only time something popped had out in a live chat, it slipped out just as she'd spun around to do a twirl, and it happened out of sight from the webcam, allowing her to deftly slip everything back in under her makeshift tropical island bra before turning back, without any viewers realising how close they had come to their Holy Grail.

During the daylight hours, having to move around, Chisame kept within a small area, moving every hour just before the collar's timer warning went off – that sound carried a fair distance – but never leaving the same three or four sectors, and never more than one or two hundred metres apart. Before she did her online broadcasts and recordings, she carefully checked the area, and while she made some noise doing the broadcasts, she hadn't seen any sight of what was going on. One good thing about the laptop and it's almost magical wireless connection to the net, as well as its battery of eternal charge, was that she could stay logged in to the Battle Royale website while she pranced about in a salad and a smile and keep an eye out if anyone was coming close to her location.

So far, no one had.

_Nyao nyao, Chiu would like to thank Akamoto-sempai for his lovely poem in the BBS,_ Chisame continued. _It was really very nice, and made Chiu very happy. Chiu would like to wish Akamoto-sempai the best of luck in his upcoming exams also! Good luck! Good luck!_ Okay, time to stop jumping excitedly, Chiu thought as there was a sudden slackening in the flax rope holding her skirt and briefs up from behind, so she clenched her thighs together. _And now, Chiu is sad, because it's time for Chiu to go! Chiu has to go eat lunch now, and Chiu is very hungry._ She rubbed her stomach for effect, feeling the skirt band give a little more. _Bye bye from Chiu now! Everyone, keep leaving Chiu your lovely messages!_

And... she's off. Chisame leaned forward and deftly flicked the webcam program off, it stopping transmitting a second before her lower half gave way and dropped to the forest floor. Great. She slithered into the black swimsuit lying at her feet before looking around and pulling the foliage off her collar, revealing it to the world. According to the timer program she had running on the laptop, she had maybe another ten minutes before the timer went off, so she began gathering her items together to move on. She had firewood, fish, flax and leaves to gather.

* * *

It was late afternoon, and the night promised to be cold. Also, she'd need to fix her Chiu costume before morning. Eventually, her items gather and skirt and shirt tucked under the crook of her arm, Chisame headed off to her next usual location to do a spot of fishing.

"Ranma!" The hiss outside his door made his heart drop. Umiko. What was she doing this time? Ranma had at least two weeks to cover. He'd left instructions that he was going to meditate inside his quarters for that time to think of new TerrorHawks, and also leave a note on his bed that it was too noisy, he couldn't hear himself think, he'd gone away to a remote part of China to meditate in the event that someone went into his room while he was gone. But Umiko was going to ruin... no, wait, this could be turned to his advantage. He smiled, then twisted his face into an annoyed expression.

"Does the 'do not disturb' sign not mean anything to ya, Umiko, or are ya just illa... allit... can't read?" Ranma growled as he threw open the door to reveal Umiko, smirking like a cat. Ranma's spine shivered inside his skin; it was bad enough she had claws, fangs, eyes, ears and a tail like a cat, but when she acted like one, it pressed all the wrong buttons. Why couldn't Umiko hide inside a box like those nice cats of the senshi?

Umiko didn't look perturbed. "I just wanted you to know, the second wave of my farming devices has been sent out to households. The people have been told they'll enhance the experience of Battle Royale. They're _eager_ to use them." She was fishing for a reaction that would confirm to her that Ranma was working against Yoshihiro.

The funny thing was, he wasn't. But he didn't yet know all of what Yoshihiro's plans would entail, nor what would happen after. If there was the slightest chance Ranma could do something to have Yoshihiro's plans succeed that would result in the saving of a lot of lives, then he'd have to give serious thought to making that happen. Hence the energy farming project, which had led indirectly to Umiko's Battle Royale event. He felt she was trying to pervert what he was trying to do. Whereas Yoshihiro appeared to do bad things because of what he was and what his value structure and moral compass was, Umiko seemed to do bad things for the hell of it, and that Ranma really couldn't stand.

But he continued to look annoyed, moreso now. "And that's what ya woke me up from meditation for? I already know what'cha doing! I get reports slipped under my door about what goes on in my workshop, remember?"

"I thought I should tell the workshop's boss _personally._ It looks like another three girls will be dying later today. The cheerleaders, it looks like. That Mana girl is really bloodthirsty, and she's tracking them now." She licked her lips hungrily. "She makes good TV viewing."

"Are you just wasting my time?" Ranma demanded.

"Oh no," Umiko smirked in a mock-coy manner. "Who me? Never, General Ranma. Never. Not I. _I_ have better things to do than waste time on one of our great Generals who is working for the betterment of our Master." She smirked again in what she thought was a knowing manner.

That was it for Ranma. "I can't take this anymore! I can't have interruptions. This is hard enough trying to come up with new ideas without being interrupted all the time! I'm going..." he appeared to pause in thought, face screwed up, scratching the back of his head. "I'm going to China! One of the mystical places there. Maybe the Amazon village or somethin'." With that, without even pausing to close his door or gather his things, Ranma slipgated out of the base and into nothingness.

But while Umiko turned his room upside down, she hadn't realised he had taken something with him, the most important thing in the world to him at the moment.

Bouncing nonchalantly against his thigh in a pants pocket was his Sailor Ceres transformation wand.

* * *

"It really is a most vulgar and violent past time," Shinku said, sipping her tea with her eyes closed while listening to the sounds of Usagi being beaten like a rag doll. Hina Ichigo thought she saw just a hint of a sadistic smile under the lip of the cup before Shinku's lower face was covered.

"Are all our big sisters coming?" Hina asked, standing on tiptoe to watch Cologne wallop Usagi again.

"No!" the Chinese elder insisted, rapping her cane on Usagi's wrist to move the younger woman's arm into a better blocking position. Usagi responded, looking annoyed more at herself, but totally focussed. It was something that Hina found very interesting to watch, and her wide, open smile soon turned from Usagi's intensive training to the four women also training intensively.

"Yes, they will be coming," Shinku promised as she lowered the cup back into its saucer. "I am expecting our most reserved sister to arrive some time tonight. I do not know why Father requires this task of us, but we shall carry out his wishes as best we can."

"Yay! Carrying out Father's wishes!" Hina yelled in sudden excitement. Cologne twitched an eye in their direction, and Shinku hurriedly shushed the emotionally younger doll.

"Oh, right," Hina whispered back in a stage whisper, "carrying out Father's wishes, yay!"

Shinku regarded her sibling with a raised eyebrow before taking another sip of her tea. "Why don't you go... do something else?" she suggested, eyeing the women trading punches, kicks, and some over-exaggerated hand and head gestures. Shinku wondered idly what these girls were practising for. Maybe they were television actresses or something, playing in a sentai show. Or maybe practising for a stage show, like one of those Sera Myu musicals she had seen posters for in the room of one of Yoshihiro's minions.

Not for one second did the thought she was out to assassinate the senshi come into her mind. She'd been told to assassinate seven young women who were most likely living together in the Kanagawa area; she'd found seven young women actually living together. Initially, they'd found what they thought were seven young women living together, but one turned out to be an aunt of the caretaker in her thirties, and there was also a male caretaker, who hadn't been mentioned by Father in the briefing sessions. It turned out it had been a similar dorm to the one they had eventually found to be correct, the similarities of which Shinku couldn't believe.

She did count herself lucky that she had arrived the day she had; if she had been one day later, and Cologne was already living in the dorm, Shinku would have moved on and kept searching for another dorm for the same reasons she had left the Hinata Sou.

Hina looked blankly at Shinku. "Go do what?" she asked eventually.

"Go inside and..." Shinku had an exaggerated expression with her face while gesturing subtly with a quick hand drawn across her throat, hidden from the women in the practise area by a finely-held china teacup. "Have some fun."

"Oh!" Hina replied, starting to walk off. "If you wanted me to kill someone, you only had to ask."

Shinku laid her head in her hands and felt like crying. Why oh why had Father relegated Hina Ichigo to the number two spot in this mission, instead of someone useful? _No matter,_ Shinku thought as she drew herself up again. _We can still do this. Seven of us, versus seven of them. It will be such a gracious victory._

The women kept up their practising, not knowing what was going on under their noses.

* * *

Konoemon had been more exhausted than Evangeline had first thought. He'd slept another eight days straight while in the resort – eight hours she could have used in the real world. Then, he'd been so weak he'd barely been able to move for another week – it was mid-afternoon on the island, Eva calculated roughly. She couldn't get television, radio or internet inside the resort, which made for an annoying time – she had no way of checking on how things were going outside, and didn't want to leave Konoemon to his own devices in her home away from home.

She padded into his room silently to observe him, watching him as he packed his case in preparation to leave. "Leather makes noise, you know," he said conversationally with his back still turned, surprising Evangeline that he knew she was there.

"My outfit didn't make any such noise," she said, looking down scandalised. She was in her adult body, as she often was while by herself in the resort. The glamour was supposed to make her look seductive, the adult she had never been able to become as a real person, but also built for stealth. Squeaking leather wasn't part of the glamour.

Glancing up again to recover her temporarily-lost composure, she found Konoemon smirking at her. "How did you do that?" she demanded, managing to stifle a blush with her anger.

Was it her imagination, or did the headmaster of Mahora Academy just give her a half-second leer? It looked friendly, but was still obviously a leer. "Your shampoo gives you away."

"Oh." Now Evangeline did feel the heat of a blush across her cheeks. "Are you leaving my humble abode?"

Konoemon decided to ignore, or missed, the deliberate gloating stress on the last three words. "Something terrible is happening to the students of class 3A. I can feel it from in here. Something isn't right."

"This television show isn't right," Eva interjected. "In my day –"

"In my day, you'd have just killed the lot of them? Hmm?" He favoured his incredibly old student with a raised eyebrow. "Oh Evangeline, I think Nagi hoped by now you'd have given up a lot of that old evil."

"What can I say? I'm a bad girl."

Konoemon wisely said nothing to this. Evangeline had helped out more times that she cared to admit. While she wasn't what he would refer to as a mage of the Light any time soon, she was here more for her excesses and the fact that Nagi Springfield, the Thousand Master, had thought she was crying out for rehabilitation, that her life had been so wretched she felt she had to become what had made her the way she was. Her confinement to the school wasn't just punishment for the evil deeds she had done, it was to help her find a new way in life. Sadly, though, Evangeline had so far managed to openly refuse and reject all offers at redemption.

But still, the headmaster was surprised to find Evangeline was itching to get back into this 'game'. It may have just been that there was no barrier in the island, and she revelled in the glory of her actual power, as she had when she stayed in Kyoto only a few short days before, but still... Konoemon thought it telling that with freedom, Evangeline hadn't tried to do anything bad apart from drink to excess and pushing herself on Nagi's son, Negi.

Thankfully, at ten years old, Negi had just smiled blankly and thought Eva was trying to fight him again. Asuna must have known otherwise, judging from how Eva had told it during his recovery, and intervened before Negi became aware of anything Evangeline had tried to do barring biting his neck.

"So, you feel ready to put me back on that damned island?"

"I need some items first," Konoemon sighed. "For that, I'll need to spend some time around the academy grounds to be able to gather what I need. Then, I'll need to recast the spell I had performed initially to get you to Kyoto to help the young Negi Springfield in the first place." He quirked an eyebrow at her. "Why do you want to go help our young teacher, anyway?"

"It's... it's not what you think," Evangeline said, turning away. Konoemon thought there may have been a blush involved this time, but she was too quick, and frankly, he was moving as fast as he could. The events on this island were most disturbing, and he agreed with Evangeline – whatever her reasons for going, she had to be there _now_. But it was still going to be a few seconds before he was ready to go and he just couldn't stop needling her.

"Maybe Nagi was right; some time in school has done you some good."

"S-shut up! It's just that I need his blood to break this stupid curse. If that bastard Nagi appeared here right now, I'd drain him dry."

"If only," Konoemon reflected morosely. Although she wouldn't admit it, Evangeline longed to see the Thousand Master again, even if only for him to ruffle her hair again and tell her she was being an idiot before trouncing her latest plan or scheme. "But we make do with what we have in the meantime. Nagi may be alive or may not be, but either way he's not here now, and you and Negi are." Finally ready to go, the headmaster turned from his packing and looked at Eva. "You may want to take Chachazero with you. You'll be at full power again, but I fear there may be stronger things there than you, child."

Evangeline regarded the old man before her curiously. It always surprised her that he made her feel so young; perhaps it was the fact he looked old and knobbled like a tree that had grown far past its prime, but for someone who was as ancient as she was, for her to feel like a child against someone else, they had to be something special. Maybe that was why she never seriously attempted to break out of Nagi's curse. Oh, she had recently, but... if she was completely honest with herself, with the barrier down, Nagi's son Negi was a decade too young to seriously challenge her. He learnt fast... maybe she was out with her estimate, but seriously, he was no match for her at present. And right now, the knock on the head he'd had, if he was thinking straight at all, he would be waiting for the right time to do something intensely stupid that he didn't have the power to stop once he'd started it. She had to be there for that, if not to stop it, then to crack open something to drink and watch the show.

"I'll get my things. And then, be ready to leave. Meet me outside." Eva turned on her heel, and left the room for her own quarters.

* * *

The island reeked, Ranma decided, but not of muck, swamp gas, or animals. No, this was an island of darkness. It was now late afternoon, the sun dipping low to the horizon, and he supposed Umiko by now would be sniffing around the base to find out what she could about what he'd done before he left, trying to find some clue as to what he might be up to.

Hopefully she didn't have a way of tracing him, mostly because after a quick trip into China, where he'd used his meditation to shift his mystical energy signature to hide from the others before a quick use of his curse and a transformation into Sailor Ceres, he'd then gated directly to the island.

But it wasn't off the coast, as the television show Battle Royale suggested. No, this island was directly in a phased dimensional pocket. Even the JSSDF soldiers and television crew thought they were close to the mainland, and would be able to see it if only the mists off the coast would rise. But no, they were separated from the mainland of Japan by more than mere kilometres – they were separated by a dozen other spacial dimensions, only about half of which were even theorised to exist by Earth's best scientists. As such, no one trying to disrupt the event would ever find them 

here, and indeed, if Ranma couldn't track the darkness he'd given himself over to, he'd never have been able to pinpoint the island's location either.

Once he had arrived at the island, though, he scurried into hiding. While no one here was that much of a threat to him, or appeared to be, he didn't want to stake his life on it. Right now, he was as strong as any of the minor senshi, not relying on his abilities as a General of the Dark Kingdom, and that meant yes, by a strong enough force, he could be killed.

This damned fuku, though, it kept catching on twigs and branches as he ducked and dived. He had never really examined it before, but it was a flumpy pleated skirt and a pair of bows – one on his chest and one on his back, just above the skirt. How the senshi did anything in this outfit, he didn't know. Except, once he stopped for a moment and gave an experimental twirl. The skirt flared up and confirmed something. If the monsters the senshi faced were typical males, then that combat manoeuvre would almost be enough to cause the monsters to lose from lack of blood.

Better still would be if they just spun with their arms out wide to stop any obstructions from making the skirt flare and interspersed those technical moves with cartwheels. Nothing on Earth could stop them.

Well, maybe women who weren't into other women, but that wasn't a place Ranma went too often, except on the odd occasion when he wondered whether Hotaru would be okay with the concept. It was difficult for Ranma himself to think of himself as a herself - Ranma was just Ranma to himself, after all – but it was an interesting problem. One for another time, though. He centred himself, and concentrated outwards, using his finely attuned senses to detect other people.

As far as he knew, he was near the school. And indeed, in the direction he thought it was, he could feel a lot of other people who were on edge, one drunk and sleeping, and one single young person who didn't feel quite right. Ranma was certain this was the child teacher, and although he wasn't sure why, Ranma was pretty certain he was still a little out of it, judging by the sense he got back. It was almost as if he wasn't entirely there. In shock, possibly. The Battle Royale show HQ at the school, where Big Man and the teachers were was shown from time to time on the television, and there were large, expensive screens around the room everyone stayed in that showed graphic replays of the day's events including all the deaths so far.

Reaching out further, he felt other people, mostly in small groups. The largest he felt on the island seemed to be about eight or ten girls, the average size was two or three, and there were a number of single girls wandering the island. The problem was, most were so far away he had no chance of feeling who was hunting who.

He knew from the television that the Mana girl was a nasty piece of work, but didn't think she'd actually be with anyone else, so more than likely she would be one of the girls by themselves.

With that thought, Sailor Ceres shrugged, picked a person at random, and leapt for the sky.

* * *

Back at the school, Negi stirred from a restless sleep. Something had woken him. It felt like a magical presence, but vastly overpowered, like something from one of the historical texts he'd read when he was at the mages academy before coming to Mahora. He rolled over on his cot, to find the screen next to his cot showing an unflattering view looking up at Mana. She was standing above one of the cameras on the forest's floor, looking serious and still. Negi had to wait to see her chest rise and fall shallowly to make sure he wasn't watching a still image. No, this was live. She was tracking someone. Whoever it was, he felt sorry for them, but what could he do? At the moment, he didn't have his staff or his wand – both were back wherever the bus was, presumably, so he had no magic to fall back on at this time. If he saw the chance, though, yes, he'd definitely do something. Just for the moment, he had no idea what he could do.

Oh, he was sure he could make a gloriously futile gesture and charge Big Man or one of the soldiers, but he'd be hit again or shot, and thinking of being hit, he rubbed his head. It still had a bump from where he'd been thumped a couple of days ago. Chamo was on his shoulder, also watching the screen. He appeared very worried.

"It's bad, Aniki. Mana's got more experience at real combat than the others. We found that out in Kyoto." The ermine wasn't smoking, which to Negi meant one of two bad things: either Chamo was out of cigarettes, or more likely he was very worried about the situation. "A couple of the girls might stand a chance, like Kaede or maybe even Asuna if she was lucky. Ku Fei might also make it, along with Setsuna, and after the Kyoto trip Setsuna would even more openly fight to protect Konoka, but whether that would be enough to protect either girl from Mana, Chamo didn't know. "This is really bad."

"If only I could get to my staff or wand," Negi murmured, eyes riveted to the screen. How could any of his students do this? How could they contemplate this at all? Sure, Mana seemed like she'd seen war before, but shouldn't that make her want to not fight? Shouldn't she be protecting her friends who wouldn't be able to fight what they were caught up in? "Then I could make Mana see reason. She's got to stop this! They could get off this island if... if only..."

"She won't stop fighting, Aniki," Chamo replied sadly. "And there's no way for me to get out of this classroom, either. I can't go get your wand. But maybe... maybe we can make our own?"

"Make our own wand, Chamo?" Negi asked, his eyes growing wide with the idea. Then he deflated. "But we'd need wood. We'd also need something to whittle it down. And then something to imbue it with magical power, so it would respond to me." Movement on screen caught Negi's eye, and he turned just in time to see Mana spring into action, leaping across a clearing and grabbing Sakurako Shiina's head in her hands and twisting it to the side. The two remaining cheerleaders screamed, then bolted as their friend's lifeless body toppled to the ground. Negi's mouth ran dry, and he couldn't bear to watch, yet he couldn't tear his eyes away. He needed to know what was happening. Mana returned, gave a glance at the two retreating cheerleaders, but before chasing them, she quickly reached inside Sakurako's backpack, withdrawing what looked to be a shuriken.

The object was confirmed as a throwing star a few moments later when another camera zoomed in and the feed switched over to it. Negi could hear the production assistants behind him telling each other what cameras had what feed, and indeed barely after Mana had stood again, another camera 

shot showed the surviving cheerleaders running blindly down the forest path they had been on, with Mana appearing in the background, but gaining on the girls fast.

Once the girls made it out of the forest, it would be easy for Mana to catch them, Negi realised, but then he saw a sight that nearly made him cheer out loud – even if it did make his heart leap. The two remaining cheerleaders, Misa Kakizaki and Madoka Kugimiya, ran past a thicket of bushes, and as soon as they were past them, Asuna, Chachamaru, Ku Fei and Setsuna stepped out from either side of the pathway, blocking Mana's path. The assassin pulled up short, a dozen metres from the other girls. The cheerleaders were stopped and calmed by Konoka, who shot Mana an uncharacteristically fierce look.

The assassin glared at the girls dispassionately, weighing up her chances. It was obvious to Negi that these were girls she hadn't wanted to face quite this quickly. And her body language showed that while she was pretty sure she could take any of the girls individually at this point in their development, together they could pose some slight threat, but the way her eyes lingered, Negi was certain only Chachamaru posed a credible threat to Mana.

"Go away, Mana, turn around and go away now," Asuna growled, her paper fan held in a ready position, her legs apart not for charging, but to stabilise herself in case Mana came at them. To Mana, and Negi, Asuna looked at least as nervous and unsure about the encounter as Mana appeared to be from Negi's vantage point. "Kaede told us what you did to Fumika. We won't let you do the same to Misa and Madoka. Leave now, and we won't fight." Asuna's stance added the silent 'yet', but it was understood by Mana all the same. Neither side appeared ready for the fight.

"Go away, Mana," Negi whispered to himself.

"That Mana chick, she's one tough nut," Chamo added from Negi's shoulder. He felt the child shiver beneath him.

"I should be out there, Chamo," Negi whispered. "I shouldn't be here. I should be out there, stopping this from happening!"

"Calm down, Aniki, calm down. You will help them. But be reasonable: without magic, there's nothing you can do... _for the moment_. Just calm down, wait, watch, and strike when you have an advantage." Even as Chamo spoke the calming words, he knew exactly what Negi meant. While he knew the waiting would likely kill something inside Negi that shouldn't be extinguished, and that he wanted to be out saving the girls from Negi's class – if only because that meant less ermine dollars he could spend from future pactios – this waiting was something that just had to be done for the moment. There would be a time to strike, there would come a time and Chamo would then make sure that even if Negi wasn't willing to go that far, he would, or he'd make sure Negi allowed the remaining victims to get their licks in before he let Negi stop them. This was something unforgivable and sickening.

If that Evangeline girl hadn't gotten herself yanked back to the school, things might have been different. If she'd given Negi his wand – or _any_ wand – this could have been and done with by now.

On the screen, the standoff continued.

"Mana, this is your last warning," Asuna repeated nervously. There was no Negi to back her up or make her use her full confidence in her newly-found magical abilities, and she was mostly going on what little Setsuna had been able to show her recently. As it was, Setsuna's stance suggested she was scared of Mana as well, which was affecting Asuna. Ku Fei, as always, looked forward to the fight, while Chachamaru was dispassionate about this as she was everything.

"Hmph," Mana smirked suddenly. She seemed calm and relaxed again, and pulled the shuriken from a pocket. The relaxed attitude scared Asuna more than the weapon. She spun it on her fingertip, before flicking it directly at Asuna's face.

Asuna managed to block it with her harisen, reacting on instinct rather than skill, and by the time she'd lowered the fan enough to see Mana, she'd registered the three girls beside her had all leapt forward. This was it.

Mana was coming.

TO BE CONTINUED...

SAILOR MOON SAYS:

Well, obviously the resolution to this fight in the next chapter. Sailor Ceres is back! And some more with the other various groups around the place. Hope you're all enjoying this still! More next time.


	8. Chapter 8

**DISCLAIMER:** Relatively standard stuff. Existing characters are properties of the people who made them up. Mitsuki, and several other characters are mine, and so's the story, hence ownership and copyright of them belongs to me. Contact me at my usual email address if you want permission to use anything I've written for whatever purposes. As per usual, I'm having formatting ripped out on upload, and now having line breaks introduced for no apparent reason. I apologise in advance for any formatting errors you may meet.

**Justice**

By

Raymond Cooper

Cruel Angel's Thesis

"With the final defeat of the Dark Lord Yoshihiro, Neo Queen Serenity could come forth from within her shell and create the shining Crystal Tokyo. A city built on love, mutual respect and equality for all shaped from living crystal spires that symbolised mankind reaching for the stars in beautiful harmony." The lecturer stopped for a moment, coughed politely, and gestured. "But of course, you can see all that over there."

And indeed, the students _could _see it "over there". Twisted, broken spirals; shattered crystal towers; a dead city rising from the blasted sands.

"A dream of peace for all, laid low by the brutality with which it was forced on mankind," the lecturer continued. "Crystal Tokyo was seen as yet another in a long line of dictatorships, spread from one side of the globe to the other throughout the ages. Can anyone remember the length of time it took to defeat the senshi from the White Moon Kingdom?" A student raised his hand, and the lecturer nodded.

"Nine years?"

"Nine years, that's right! After conventional arms failed, and a massed barrage of N2 mines failed also to dent the shielding around the Crystal Palace... ah, who can tell me what happened next?"

Another student called out. "GEHIRN, operating under the SEELE protocols, activated the Evangelion series of piloted giant humanoids after an eight year development cycle."

"Exactly!" The lecturer was getting into his stride now, moving back and forth on his open-air podium overlooking the dig site. "Two Evangelion units were lost penetrating the artificial terror field of the palace, but the four that made it through caused the deaths of two Sailor Senshi, Venus and Mars. Sailor Mercury, using computer technology still beyond GEHIRN's reach, was able to disable another of the Eva units before being eaten by this one." The lecturer tapped his pointer on his projection board, and the image changed obediently to a giant clad in purple and black. "Evangelion Unit-01. If you're lucky, you've seen it in the museum in the Tokyo Geofront. If not... you've no doubt seen it in the movies and various television shows, both documentaries and dramas it and representations of it have appeared in."

"What about the rumours that the Evangelions are based on Meltrandi remains?"

The lecturer considered that for a few moments before responding. "The Zentraedi have never claimed ownership of the remaining Evangelions. As far as we know, they're human through and through, the songs of Lynn Minmay notwithstanding. Indeed, there are small suggestions in the body structure that would suggest humanity was the origin of these mighty creatures." The lecturer shook his head. "No, the only people who claim that are those that thought battle-armoured Meltrandi were smaller versions of the Evangelion series, which we all know today they aren't." There was a small chuckle that passed through the class group.

"The Evangelions were beaten back by the arrival of Sailor Saturn and Neo Queen Serenity to the battle, but the senshi could not tear the AT fields of the Evas, and it seemed like a stalemate might be reached. Had Serenity backed down at that point, the devastation that followed might have been avoided, but she was stubborn that er view was the only one that mattered. Her Crystal Tokyo vision was everything in her eyes, and the only thing. No one had any choice in the matter, and once again, she blanketed the world in magical energies to deactivate machinery globally."

"Again," the lecturer pointed out, "this resulted in many deaths. Her view that machinery not under her direct control was bad and could be used for crime or war yet again consigned hundreds of thousands in reactivated hospitals to die, planes to crash and many mechanical opening devices – door locks, elevators, submarines and ships and the like, to simply lock and refuse to allow anyone out. The ocean became a floating graveyard for the second time in a decade. But it had taken two years to work out how to circumvent Serenity's magic the first time around and reactivate the machines – everyone remembered how to do it this time, and some machines had been designed specifically to be unaffected. For an example, again we look to the Evangelions and even the early Gundams. Alien machinery was also unaffected, and the Juraians who were still on Earth joined forces with a number of the other alien representatives then on Earth and resumed the war until mankind could bring its new weapons to the fore."

The lecturer turned and triggered his pointer again. The screen changed to show the globe, mapped out in various colours – blue for human-controlled sectors, red for the senshi. The blue areas were few and far between, but as the students watched, it expanded in fits and starts against the red areas. "Serenity's Senshi Corps, created from willing and not-so-willing converts to the fundamentalist feminist army, were no match for the unparalleled co-operation between member nations of the UN, with their access to new forms of AS mechs, the remaining Evangelions, the Gundam forces, and even the UN's newly-incorporated space colonisation arm got involved with release of some of their variable form Valkyrie fighters. But indeed, our greatest warriors had come from within our own societies. While a great deal of the so-called magical people joined Serenity initially, a number rebelled as her actions became increasingly viewed as hardline. The second wave of technological-related deaths directly caused by Serenity was the final blow to many of these people, and a number of people formerly aligned with Crystal Tokyo switched sides. It's also believed that a small number of the senshi were against that last action by Serenity and fled the palace, but a few days after these rumours surfaced, the Mage's world under the direction of Negi Springfield cast a forced recognition spell and forced the civilian identities of the senshi out into the open in such a way that anyone looking at them would know of them."

"Is this when the senshi killings started?" someone asked from the back of the class group. A tall woman nearby started in surprise and what appeared to be horror.

"That's right! There were unconfirmed reports that eight senshi had been found and killed through this manner, but most were found to be revenge killings or people stirred up in mob mentality. In reality, Sailor Nemesis and Sailor Shiva were never seen in the battlefield again, and Sailor Jupiter was imprisoned by the mages for atrocities caused by her in Wales early on in the war. While there has been some debate as to what the atrocities were, there was little complaint about the just-ness of her imprisonment – the world had just spent the best part of a decade living in fear of the soldiers descending from the sky and forcing their attitudes on people without considering the process that had led events to that point, nor what would happen as soon as they left. And the examples... but you all know of Moscow and Paris. I'm sure you've been to the monuments." There was a general murmur of agreement through the crowd. "Serenity still had much power on her side. With Nemesis sidelined, and her disciple, the unbalanced Shiva, also out of sight, Serenity and Saturn were the major players in that side."

"How were they defeated?" the tall woman from the back of the class asked. "I've not read a definitive answer on the subject."

"No one is sure what happened to Saturn, but it's thought that she was lost when GEHIRN manufactured a sea of Dirac under the palace and swallowed it. It's possible she also melted into the background and vanished – while she defended her queen as zealous as any of the other senshi, Saturn always appeared to disagree with many of the actions Serenity took as she increasingly moved to consolidate her power and control over events to create peace. Her most redeeming moment in the eyes of many was her outburst during the Paris Accords, when she shocked Serenity by admitting their actions were too over the top and needed to be reined in. For someone who wielded so much power, she was the one apparently trying to be the voice of reason. It was often thought she had a lover on our side of the war, but nothing could ever be proven."

"The other senshi?" the tall woman queried again.

"With Sailor Saturn gone, and Sailor Venus the only remaining of the so-called Inner, or original, senshi, Serenity became increasingly more and more desperate in her attempts to control the world. They unravelled completely when GEHIRN's Angel constructs and Dolems sang a chorus that blocked the words and power behind Serenity's last mind control attempts. She was broken in Minato Ward by conventional forces, just over there," the lecturer pointed at a blackened chunk of crystal nearby, "and then arrested by the JSSDF and removed to a secure location to await trial." The lecturer taped his pointer on the screen again, and the image changed to one of Serenity, grimy, dirty, exhausted and in a crouching position with her hands fed down to the floor between her feet, where wrists and ankles were manacled to a metal floor. Her eyes seemed dead as she glanced up at the camera, hair matted across the young woman's forehead, her orange prison jumpsuit showing signs of wear and tear. "She was held in a secured cell, impregnable against magical or conventional attacks, for ten years. There were four attempts by the surviving Senshi Corps members to rescue her, each time the attempts were repelled, until the last attempt the day before her trial sentence was announced. That last attempt was the one that got closest to getting her out of the prison, breaching into the inner defences. It was believed one of the minor Sailor Senshi, Sailor Luna, had led the planning phase and the charge, which is why it was thought to have gotten so far, but no bodies could be tied to the Sailor Luna sightings, which means theoretically she could still be out there now, planning another strike. Some members of the Senshi Corps are still known to exist and strike every fifty years or so in Serenity's name." He tapped the screen again, and the image changed to a black and white still of the horrifying aftermath of this final attempt. Incongruously, there was what appeared to be the shattered corpse of a black cat and a broken wand of some description next to it in the middle of the image.

"But the peace she championed..."

A younger girl nearby gave the tall woman at the back a withering glance. "She did more for world peace dead than she ever did alive."

"How can you say that?"

"A thousand years of history say that. We were lucky that war was so well-documented, and that the records were deemed so important they were updated every time new recording media came into play." The lecturer's eyes narrowed as he looked at the tall woman who was asking so many questions. It was obvious he didn't receive nearly so much attention in his classes, and this made him suspicious. The woman quietened down. "Serenity, finally, was put to death. Ten years earlier, it would have been near-on impossible to execute her, but the war against her forces had made humanity very good at killing people of a magical nature, and Evangelion Unit-01 was given the honour to pierce her heart with the legendary Lance of Longinus. She expired on Valentine's Day, 2022, and her death repaired much of the damage the long, costly war had caused. Even to this final end, she proclaimed her innocence and that humanity had perverted her mission to bring universal peace and love. Humanity now numbered less than three billion people, due in large part not to the use of N2 mines, Eva units or magical people, but to Serenity's Senshi Corps razing entire regions to flush out soldiers, or brain-wiping populations to remove their fear and anger, only to find she removed their will to live and capacity to reproduce. For every decision she made, Serenity doomed not only herself, but everyone around her. But with Serenity gone, and borders flushed away by a decade of war and a decade of rebuilding, humanity had reclaimed the planet, joined hands, and was reaching towards the stars again. Serenity's death was the birth of a new prosperous age for a peaceful humanity." The lecturer tapped the screen again with his pointer, and it switched off. "Now, please, go forth amongst the ruins of Crystal Tokyo, and reflect on what we have discussed today, and in the previous lessons. This was the birthplace of a new humanity, a new peace, and led to a thousand years of peace. Perhaps rather than remembering it as the home of a tyrant, we should be thankful for the bliss she has bought us in her absence, that her trials we endured as a race forged us to become something new."

Slowly, in groups of two or three, the students drifted from the open-air lecture theatre on the edge of what had been Crystal Tokyo. The tall woman found herself heading over to the ruined spires, seeing the sand and rubble swirled around the base of the constructs. Along what had once been a wide street, there were ruined plinths where statues had once stood. All that remained now were the legs of the statues, mostly raised to the ankles, although one or two had survived to the knees or just higher. On the ground beneath them lay destroyed statues untouched by weather in the thousand years they had lain here broken. The woman took in a breath, then continued moving amongst the destroyed statues of a world long since gone by.

The girl who had been standing with her back at the lecture found her standing by a statue that remained halfway up to its knees intact, showing small slipper-like shoes on what appeared to be an adult physique. The plinth, long since defaced by shrapnel and rude visitors, suggested this was the representation of a "Sailor Plato".

"The kids never come up with good graffiti these days," the girl said, eyeing the barely scratched-in line above the word's central 'U', turning the letter into an 'A'. "Honestly. They could have gotten diamond drills in here easily enough, pierced the base and made it something really cutting. But no." She shook her head disgustedly.

"I guess its education today. Kids are always the same," the older woman replied, reflecting she was speaking to someone around the age of the person who most likely had defaced the statue's remains. "I just think tombs should be left alone for the dead to be left in peace. We... may not agree with how the past has transpired, but it is in the past. It... can't be undone. It can't be changed." The woman seemed more thoughtful than anything.

"Oh, I think it can," the girl said, kicking a chunk of statue that looked like a brooch with Pluto's symbol on it. "Take 'Sailor Plato' here. Legend has it she was the Senshi of Time, the one who guarded the Time Gates on Pluto at the end of times. But she never showed up in any part of the war. Neptune and Uranus did. Their parts are well known. This Sailor Luna kept the dream alive for the decade before she was killed. The Inner Senshi died pretty quick, apart from Jupiter who was imprisoned. Sailor Saturn disappeared. Nemesis and Shiva were never seen again. The Minor Senshi had been mostly wiped out in the war – the Senshi Corps were effective mostly against troops not prepared for superhuman strength, speed, agility and magic. The advanced technology that was coming out of GEHIRN and a dozen other industries was what stopped the senshi eventually."

"I wouldn't think anyone would stand up to Neo Queen Serenity," the woman said, distractedly picking up the piece of statue the blond girl had kicked away and turning it over in her hands to gaze at the symbol it held. "Surely what she wanted was for the best."

"This is what a thousand years does to people. Everyone's saying now, 'Oh, that poor girl, she was hunted and killed for dreaming of peace.'" The girl spat disgustedly. "But that was never the issue. No one had complaint with what she was _trying_ to do. No, they took issue with how she went about it. No one was asked. No one had any choice. They went to work one day, and the world _changed around them._ It was a horrible time. Once people realised what had happened, they retaliated. They weren't given an option. They were _told_ this was the way things would be now by a magical voice in their head."

"You make it sound personal."

The girl pulled herself up short, getting her anger back under control. "No one who lived through those days would dare say she was anything but evil."

"But no one here _has_ lived through those days," the woman replied, placing the chunk of statue down on the plinth respectfully. "Those days were, as the lecturer said, a thousand years ago. No one lives that long."

The girl snorted a laugh. "Hahaha! You actually believe that? The senshi are effectively immortal and locked into their bodies on the day they awoke. They don't age, or if they do, it's very slowly. Then there's vampires as well. Vampires don't change either." The girl gestured. "If this city hadn't been taken to during the war by Evas, N2 mines, demons and anything else humanity could muster, it would still be standing here shining and special and a vicious reminder that until all the senshi have been hunted down and killed or imprisoned, the world will never truly be safe."

"But the senshi were a force for peace and love, so the history books say."

"Yes, and some may have believed that, but really. Think about it. What kind of peace-loving freedom-causing monster wipes a population's brains to make them forget about fighting one another? What kind of monster robs the will to fight from someone entirely, to the point people stop breathing because it's too hard? That they bleed out if they stub their toe because their body is magically programmed to not resist anything that happens to it? She wiped out millions in the first days because she couldn't get her level of control right. And then she had to be ever more and more extreme with what she did to keep her levels of control active. If she relaxed for an instant, the world would have shrugged off what she was doing, and won the war. Her bright peaceful universe with her at the centre would have been wiped out."

"All the books say Sailor Moon wasn't like that."

"All the books forget that Sailor Moon was fighting for an ideal, not actually having the power to make the ideal come true. That point where she changed from one to the other was when the problem started." The girl turned around, taking in Crystal Tokyo's corpse with a swing of her arms. "The problem continued when she didn't listen to her friends. It got worse when she started thinking she knew better than anyone else. Her final nail was when she killed technology across the planet. The deaths that caused did nothing to endear her to the people she claimed to be representing. It touched everyone. She had little support after that, most of what she did were people who were unhinged or otherwise had grudges against the rest of the world. They became her army."

"The Senshi Corps," the woman responded after a moment.

"That's right," the girl nodded. "They made things worse as well, and Serenity allowed it to happen. She let the atrocities continue because she didn't think her chosen would act as they did. By the time she realised they had, she was even worse. She went from trying to help to being the worst dictator imaginable. She killed without a second thought, both because she wasn't realising she was killing people, but also that she was thinking she was doing the world a favour and bringing it peace."

"I haven't read this in the texts," the woman said, thinking hard. She twirled strands of her long hair in between two fingers while thinking.

The girl remained silent, but with a smirk on her face.

"You sound like you know more than the lecturer about this subject," the older woman continued. The blond girl simply turned and started walking away. The woman followed.

After a minute or so, she stopped and turned back. "I think I should warn you, you're probably being watched right now anyway."

"What?"

The girl shrugged. "Me talking to you either probably won't help your case much. But they are always watching this monument for people who take... special reverence of this place. _Special_ reverence, if you get my meaning."

"I'm afraid I..."

"The forced recognition spell Negi Springfield cast a thousand years ago still stands, and while not many have ever actually seen a senshi in real life, and therefore know what one looks like... there are people here who _do _know, and they will be coming." The girl turned again and walked off, but this time the woman looked around, startled, wondering who was watching, who might have known.

As yet, she just saw people moving around, milling to look at the various signs that dotted the region telling the story of this place. It was upsetting to her; she had spent so long in this place and its forebear, and seeing it post-destruction was very distressing. This wasn't her home, damn it, this was a tourist attraction. Yes, everyone was happy. Everyone in the world seemed very peaceful, and yes, there was no war, the Zentraedi and other invaders had been met peacefully and integrated into human society as they wished, but something was missing.

She feared there was no soul. Plenty of heart, but an indefinable quality she usually associated with people from times long since past appeared to be lacking here. What was it? Had Serenity somehow made a wrong move? With the eight major senshi there to assist her, Serenity should have known the time to make her choice. She had even been directed towards someone who should have been able to help them – she had seen it! It should have been there. But everything had fractured when the Time Gate ruptured and now she couldn't figure out how to make things right. Whereas before she had a shining beacon of light as Crystal Tokyo shone throughout the cosmos about what was good and right, throughout time and space, now nothing guided her on her way and nothing gave her the strength to continue. Instead, this all seemed wrong. Very, very wrong.

She heard a noise behind her, and turned –

* * *

Asuna dropped her harisen enough to see Mana tackle Ku Fei head on first, with an outstretched foot slamming into Ku's midriff, but suddenly blocked by the forearm the Chinese girl managed to slip in before the kick connected. Her other hand grabbed at Mana's knee, and using her momentum as she swung in a rapid circle around Mana's trajectory, tried to throw Mana back the way she came. Mana, although seeming surprised at Ku's sudden move, managed to bring her other foot in and with a rapid heel kick to Ku Fei's shoulder made the smaller girl drop her.

The assassin recovered quickly, though, and spun in a low arc on her hands, swinging her legs out wide. Ku, still off balance from her spin, managed to half-sidestep the kick but still stumbled off-balance, while Setsuna gave an inarticulate battle cry and swung her sword in deep. Mana twisted her body sideways and the blade nicked through her clothing, but she still had time to thrust off the ground in Setsuna's direction. The older woman's feet slid either side of Setsuna's blade, surprising the young swordswoman, and one heel caught her in her right shoulder making it numb, while the other hit a nerve cluster just below above her right breast that momentarily paralysed her left arm – the result being that Setsuna had to flip backwards out of battle quickly to avoid the follow up double-punch.

Instead, Mana pivoted again on a foot, and quickly reached out and grabbed Setsuna's arm, swinging her with the momentum of her spin to throw her into Chachamaru.

The gynoid remained stationary, but her catching of the Shinmei-ryu master distracted her long enough for Mana to make a desperate leap at Asuna to bypass her harisen by coming in from her undefended left-hand side. Asuna made a belated attempt to swing her harisen around, but just wasn't quite quick enough.

Still, while Asuna wasn't quick enough, Ku Fei was, and the Chinese girl interposed herself between the combatants again, bringing her right foot up hard. It connected with Mana, who bounced backwards and quickly turned her rebound into a controlled roll and flipped to her feet while Ku slammed back into Asuna and both tumbled with the force of the rebound. By this time, Chachamaru had replaced Setsuna next to her, who was still cradling her left arm with her right while keeping a firm grip on her sword, and she jetted forward to tackle Mana around the waist after her recovery.

The assassin allowed herself to tumble backwards and tried to roll as the much-heavier gynoid pushed her towards the ground. If she didn't get out of Chachamaru's grip, she wasn't going to be able to shift her, and this thought galvanised Mana into further action. A quick knee to the android's stomach while her grip wasn't yet complete allowed Mana to move outside the reach of the gynoid's clutching arms, and she rolled backwards as fast as she could before springing again to her feet. At some point during the tumble towards and then away from Asuna, she had managed to come up with the shuriken in her hands, and faster than anyone thought possible, she flung the razor-bladed throwing star with deadly accuracy at Misa – but again, Ku Fei was faster, and her upflung arm managed to catch the shuriken in the only way Ku had to her – by biting deep into the meat of her forearm.

The Chinese girl screamed for a few moments in agony before pulling her arm down and yanking the metal star out.

Mana took that chance to run.

She was sure that she could take another girl or two out, but at this time it wasn't worth risking going up against Chachamaru. But one thing was for certain, she hadn't seen Evangeline there. The vampire mage was gone, and it was now just her clockwork toy remaining. She could deal with one of them.

Once the girls were certain Mana had left the area, Konoka ran lightly over to Ku Fei, and gave a small sound at the blood and meat displayed on Ku's forearm. "It not so bad," Ku said between gritted teeth. "Just need bandage and some water, Ku will be good as new!" She gave an unconvincing chuckle.

Konoka looked at Asuna seriously. "I can heal this, but I think I need to be somewhere a little safer first. This isn't like Kyoto."

"I know, Konoka, but please, do your best. Chachamaru can hide our footprints and trail, but blood might be a little hard." _Thank god_ _we don't have any werewolves in our class,_ Asuna thought to herself. _Well, that I know of._ Aloud, she added, "I know you can do it. You've got to. And we've got to take care of Misa and Madoka now as well, so we have to be strong and be good. You know what Negi would say. He'd make some great speech about our teamwork and how we're the best class at Mahora. And you know what? In this situation, we are. No one else could do this."

"No one else has a professional assassin in their class," Chachamaru interjected. Asuna pretended the gynoid had said nothing.

"But we can. We're better than good, we're great! So I'm sure you can do this now."

Konoka nodded, briefly cheered by the speech. She set to work healing Ku Fei's arm with a healing spell. Setsuna made sure her left arm was working properly with a few exercises as she regained control of it, and with Chachamaru watching and listening for Mana's progress, that left Asuna to deal with the two new girls.

"Umm," Asuna started confidently, looking back to the injured Chinese girl and her best friend healing the sliced arm with a magical glow from one of her hands, "this might look bad. But believe me, it isn't. Ku will be up and at them again in no time, you'll see. She's in great hands! Ahem. But it's good to see both of you again," Asuna added genuinely. "We've been trying to gather people for their protection since we got out, in case someone snapped and went like Mana."

"Mana hasn't snapped," Chachamaru spoke up eventually. "She has been given a mission of survival. Kill or be killed. It is a situation in which Mana Tatsumiya most thrives. A situation she has been in many a time before. Her fighting in Kyoto has been the least demanding of her recent jobs. In fact, she is probably looking at this as an exercise."

"Why would she be thinking that?" Asuna found herself asking without thinking.

"Because she has developed plans to remove everyone from our class in many a situation, and that is effectively what this is. She has studied you all, knows your strengths and weaknesses."

"Then she knows you're a combat droid, right?"

Chachamaru let the term she found offensive slip past her; as in any situation, Asuna didn't mean anything bad by her comments, she just couldn't realise something she didn't know. But Chachamaru was much more than a simple combat droid, unlike her sisters back at Satomi's lab. Still, without her master, that might as well be all she was. She had failed her master miserably, but didn't know how to rectify the problem. "Yes, she knows I am a Ministra Magi gynoid, fully equipped for combat operations," she spelled out, hoping Asuna would recognise the subtle stress on the words.

"So she's thinking of attacking you? I didn't think Mana had any magic ability and wasn't good with anything other than guns."

"M-magic?"

Asuna turned back to Misa, but Setsuna waved her off. "I'll speak with them."

"Okay," Asuna replied, before turning back to Chachamaru.

"Mana Tatsumiya is a trained assassin, well-versed in multiple techniques of combat. While she specialises in gun combat, her unarmed combat skills are exemplary for someone of her age. It may have to do with the feeling of loss of her combat partner some years ago – the life of a Ministra Magi can seem to have no meaning when their mage partner dies or is killed." Chachamaru noted the surprise in Asuna's eyes but chose not to follow up her revelation at that time. "In short, she is deadly with or without a firearm."

"She's a mage's partner?" Asuna finally asked after a few moments silence. "She's like us?"

"Not like us; Mana chose her life. I was created for it, you were brought into it."

"I mean Ministra Magi, dummy. Don't be so dense."

Chachamaru looked down, turning her hands out slightly as she regarded her form. "I am afraid I cannot be any less dense than I already am. Perhaps if we discuss this with Satomi, we may be able to provide me with such a capability –"

"Don't be so stupid!"

"I – Oh. I see. Yes, in this sense, Mana Tatsumiya is like us. She functioned once in a similar capacity to us for a mage, who was killed. Mana herself survived, and it is thought being unable to cope with that loss, she turned to combat and assassination as a way of returning how she felt to the rest of the world." Chachamaru paused for a second before adding, "but this is only my thought on the subject. Mana is very good at what she does."

"I'm finished here, Asuna," Konoka spoke from behind. Asuna considered the situation, sighing and pinching the bridge of her nose.

"This would be so much easier if that idiot Negi was here."

"Yes," Chachamaru replied. "I have standing orders, if the Mistress was to perish to follow him."

Asuna blinked in surprise. "Why would you have orders like that? Evangeline hates Negi, doesn't she?" But her mind turned back to the last days in Kyoto, when Evangeline had turned up and saved them. No, she looked at him differently. And while it was hard to tell coming from a ten year old body and face, she seemed to be considering something surprisingly adult... Asuna wasn't sure if it was sexual, but she definitely had plans she wanted. There was the rumour she knew Negi's father, the Thousand Master, and knowing Negi believed with all his heart his father was still alive may have had Eva thinking perhaps she could have a rematch, or turn his son into a weapon to be used against him, or something. Asuna realised suddenly she knew very little about Evangeline. Up until Negi had arrived to teach their class, Evangeline had been keeping her head down low. Now, with Negi stirring things up, Eva seemed to be moving with the rest of the class.

For better or for worse, Negi Springfield created change.

"The Mistress has also ordered I only reveal the reasons upon confirmation of her death. But while she is not here, he would be the next mage in line for me to receive orders from."

"Is that another standing order?" Konoka asked, joining the pair.

"Is because Chachamaru loves Negi!" Ku crowed.

Asuna caught the rapid flush of liquids close to the surface under Chachamaru's cheeks, and blinked in surprise. But the dark colouration was gone before Asuna could mention it, and Chachamaru said without a break in the conversation, "How could a gynoid love a mage?" before she turned back to the path, and led the way back towards their cave.

As Asuna directed the others to follow, she realised that Chachamaru hadn't actually said _no_.

* * *

"Argh!" Yue Ayase cried as Haruna Saotome pulled out her spine and held it bloodily aloft.

"I have succeeded! Now I can return to my homeland!" Haruna announced as her former friend expired on the ground in front of her. Behind her lay a bloody pyramid of other bodies. She attached the spine to her belt, joining her other trophies.

"You are really sick sometimes," Yue commented, looking up. "Who in their right mind gave you drawing implements as a weapon?"

Haruna pouted for a moment before cracking into a wide grin. "But it's a great ending, isn't it?"

Yue shook her head almost imperceptibly. "As the victim on the last page, no, I don't think so. And I can't go super saiajin, I'm pretty sure. You have to be part monkey god to do that, and I look terrible with piled-up blond hair." _Although I look pretty good with that slim body and bulked-up chest,_ she added to herself.

Haruna took the page back and sighed. "I even gave you bigger boobs so you could die happy. Or maybe it should have been Negi who I put in here as the winner, because he's the one most likely to survive."

Yue remained silent. While the two of them had met up pretty early on after being released from the classroom, they hadn't been able to find Nodoka, and hoped she was okay. So far, they'd holed up in a small clearing near a large tree, surrounded on all sides with thick bush and only one way in and never moved far from it. Yue had thought that would be best for their own protection; Haruna had wanted to go all adventure-like and build a treehouse like the Swiss Family Robinson's that she remembered from some movie or other. Yue had to remind her they had no machined wood and neither were particularly physical. So, Haruna had simply drawn one instead.

Yue had as her weapon a drink in a cardboard tetra pack, with a plastic straw attached to the back. Quite what she was supposed to do with this, she didn't know. Maybe gloat over Haruna's corpse with a victory drink when they both starved to death, but there wasn't much other use for it. Still, Yue was saving it for a special occasion.

"We should find the others," Haruna announced suddenly. "This is no fun sitting here drawing comics with you." At Yue's sharp look, Haruna added, "because Asuna would make a far better super-warrior to fight against."

"And you need Asuna for your twisted fantasies – why?"

"As a model!"

"You've got me for a model and you've drawn me like Kaede!" Yue blushed. "I am not that big. I am not that cute." She tried to hide behind her hair, but Haruna was having none of that and leaned forward, her intensity transformed from mirth into seriousness.

"You are very cute, Yuecchi. Never say otherwise." Haruna sat back and her impish smile returned, promising trouble. "But there's safety in numbers, don'tcha think? And you'd be safer with more models around for my next issue!"

"I'm already dead," Yue reminded her friend. "I can't come back to life. You ripped my spine out."

"Ahh, but that only makes you crippled. It will be revealed in the next issue that you were only _mostly_ dead, and then we join forces and go on to fight the next big bad guy!"

"Who's that?"

"Big Man himself. Drawn with an absurdly small –"

"No, I mean outside. There's someone coming. Quick!" Yue grabbed her bag and items and slipped under a specially-prepared mat of leaves and grasses to hide, Haruna doing the same. Through the small peepholes they had in the blankets, they could see a pair of grey booted feet enter their small hideaway. They were attached to long, bare legs which vanished under a grey pleated skirt which seemed to give way to an abbreviated sailor-suit outfit. It showed off more than the woman obviously thought, the way she was standing, and even hidden and knowing that any noise could spell her death, Yue could see she was busting to make a comment.

"You can both come out. I know you're here," the sailor-suited girl said.

Yue didn't move for a moment, but then Haruna sat up, throwing her blanket off and getting to her feet, right in the girl's face. "My god, I have to draw you!"

"Um, thank you, but -" the girl began.

Haruna's arm slapped down around the other girls shoulders as if they were long-lost comrades. "Because, Yuecchi, this is how I should have drawn your boobs!"

TO BE CONTINUED..

SAILOR MOON SAYS:

Another chapter. Took a deviation from where I thought it was going to go initially, but the future-stuff was coming in a few chapters. Like the Battle Royale progression, it fit there naturally while writing instead of the fight I was planning originally – my apologies if you were expecting an earlier resolution to the fight with Mana!

Next chapter, obviously there's more with Ceres and her... two new friends, Evangeline and more from the future.


	9. Chapter 9

**DISCLAIMER:** Relatively standard stuff. Existing characters are properties of the people who made them up. Mitsuki, and several other characters are mine, and so's the story, hence ownership and copyright of them belongs to me. Contact me at my usual email address if you want permission to use anything I've written for whatever purposes. As per usual, I'm having formatting ripped out on upload, and now having line breaks introduced for no apparent reason. I apologise in advance for any formatting errors you may meet.

**Justice**

By

Raymond Cooper

Make This Go On Forever

Sailor Ceres found herself in the uncomfortable position of having her breasts groped by a leering manga artist. Shocked into immobility, she wasn't quite sure what she should do. Oh, Ranma Saotome would make some noise like a squawking chicken and jump back, his honour as a man insulted; the part of him that had grown into a separate component, Kaname, would have slapped the other girl; Sailor Ceres just wasn't sure what she should do. She was here to save these girls, not to cause them more harm.

"What... what are you doing?" she asked, finally.

Haruna Saotome leered again at her friend, just now raising up from her hiding place under a matted mesh of leaves and grass. "See? See? This could be you. Instead of that blond bimbo I drew, draw you like this!"

"Stop handling her chest," Yue said, unable to look directly at Ceres' face, but certainly able to look sideways at Haruna's hands on the other girl's ample chest.

Ceres found her voce again. "No, really, what are you doing? You're fighting for your lives here, and you're... will you stop groping me!" Haruna stopped, shocked, hands frozen. Ceres removed them and readjusted the grey bow that lay from her collar down across her chest. "That's better. Aren't you supposed to be killing each other?" Ceres asked, suddenly concerned. "Because I thought that was what this show was about."

Yue shrank back a little at the comment, but Haruna still seemed frozen. She finally turned to her shorter friend, and whispered in a loud stage whisper, "I don't know her!"

"That's what I was trying to tell you," Yue whispered back, a little quieter. "She's not from our class."

Haruna moved back to stand slightly in front of her smaller friend, an automatic gesture that touched Yue. "Are you with the men filming this depraved show?"

"No," Ceres replied. "I'm here to help."

"Can you get us off this island?" Haruna demanded.

"Not without causing more problems," Ceres answered.

"What problems could be worse than this?" Haruna asked.

"The kind that invade the island and rip everyone limb from limb before I can do anything," Ceres responded.

Yue put a hand on Haruna's arm to stop her from saying anything else. "That's a good point," Yue said, "There are always things than can be worse than right now. Isn't that right, Haruna?" She shook her friend slightly to get her to answer.

Haruna gave an emphatic nod.

"As far as I can tell," Ceres continued, "you're safe in here for the moment. I haven't seen any cameras, but that doesn't mean they're not in here."

* * *

Big Man wandered through the classroom on dusk, watching the various screens. Each one showed a different group of girls, or even the same group but from a different angle. There were numerous screens, too many for Negi to count. But he watched the presenter, while the view on the main screen showing what was currently airing on the network to viewers was continuing to show the girls led by Asuna settling back into their cave. A voice over drifting through the classroom was talking about how Asuna had been well-known for her rowdy ways and viewed herself as a dispenser of justice.

But Big Man stopped after passing one of the small screens, and peered in at something closer. Negi stood from his cot, and walked over to stand just behind the presenter. It was in a small clearing in the midst of some tall shrubs that the camera focussed, and in it, Negi could see Haruna and Yue standing there, facing a point just in front of them both. Haruna put her hand up, as if she was clasping someone on the shoulder, and her eyes seemed to flick up and down with a bit of a weird smile like those she would spontaneously generate when realising there was a good manga character reference before her. Negi could only wonder what was going on, but Yue seemed to be talking, and talking fast – there was something there going on that was making her nervous.

"Look! The first girls are starting to crack!" Big Man called out, and brought the camera feed up onto several of the larger monitors around the classroom. Nitta took a single glance before downing another cup of sake, his attention firmly rooted in the alcohol in front of him, but the others in the room – the production assistants, the cameramen, the soldiers – all turned to watch the two teenage girls talking to themselves.

It really did look like they were talking to something, Negi thought. Chamo thought the same. "Do you think Evangeline's back?" Negi whispered? The ermine stayed quiet, but shook his head. They were too close to Big Man for Chamo to speak in case the presenter realised there was more going on here than he first thought. It was bad enough to have a ten year old Welsh teacher taken with the class full of teenage girls, but a talking animal? It would seal both Negi's and Chamo's fates with those of his students. But Negi had to admit, invisibility and chatting amicably with Haruna and Yue wasn't Eva's style. No, unless she really thought about what danger could happen to the students with the explosive collars, Evangeline would likely waltz into the school through the roof, scatter the soldiers with a magical blast of wind, and then gut anyone stupid enough to remain there – if she didn't set her puppets on them.

Assuming she could bring any back.

No, this wasn't Evangeline, Negi realised. This was someone else, with a magical bent. A few times, he thought he'd seen someone in class sitting next to Asakura, but when he'd looked directly there was no one there. Hmm. Thinking back, his class roster that Takamichi had given him had listed a Sayo Aisaka as student number 1, with a hand-scrawled note not to move her seating arrangements. And Big Man had also called out the same name on their first night – Negi remembered it, even though in a daze, with the girls protesting no one by that name was in their class. Perhaps Haruna and Yue were actually talking to someone... a ghost. That would make sense.

But then, if they could see this ghost, wouldn't the camera also be picking it up?

"Is there a possibility there's a mage in the class who can bend light? Negi asked in a whisper again. Chamo shook his head, but after a long delay: he didn't really know either, but anyone other than Evangeline who was that powerful would normally stick out like a sore thumb, and no one in the class did.

Even as strong in basic spells as Negi was, he couldn't bend light to remain visible to a single person but not be detected by anyone else – the most basic invisibility spell rendered one invisible to everyone, and even then needed a magical circle to be drawn in place. A close look at the ground surrounding the girls on the screen showed no signs of such a circle. No, it was likely to be something else.

_Something technological?_ Negi wondered, his eyes rolling towards the ceiling. Chachamaru was a robot; it was possible she could have some such device. But he'd just watched her with Asuna and the others, defending Misa and Madoka and then leading them back to their cave hideaway, so it wasn't her. Satomi was back at the cave and had never left; she only moved the slightest amount necessary to prevent her collar from detonating, the same as many of the girls. That fact made them sitting targets to someone like Mana, who was prowling around looking to cut down on the competition a little. Chao was the only other girl off the top of Negi's head he could think of who could possibly have developed a device like that, but she was practising some kind of martial art fighting style he didn't recognise. That ruled out anyone internal to the class, at least.

Someone from outside the class? But who? Was there someone on the outside who knew this was wrong? Was there someone who was willing and able to help save his students? Negi didn't know, but he decided he had to keep a closer eye on how the show was progressing. Without magic to track his students, all he had was these screens.

* * *

"It's almost the third night since I've been gone; can you hurry this up?" Evangeline's irritation ran through her voice like a flooded river through a desert. Konoemon Konoe sighed as he prepared the ingredients again. This time, he was making a spell that wouldn't completely drain him and possibly yank Evangeline back if he collapsed. It was difficult going; while Nagi Springfield hadn't been the brightest of all mages, and indeed preferred using a lot of the simpler spells available, he was exceedingly cunning when it came to tightening clauses in spells that could allow loopholes. The curse he had placed on Evangeline was exceedingly tight, and only in certain circumstances would Eva be able to leave the school grounds. One of those was if this was a planned school activity, which had required the headmaster to stamp a permission form stating Evangeline was allowed to be outside the grounds every five seconds. This had to last longer and require less maintenance.

The headmaster had finally found a loophole he could exploit in the wording of the curse, and with the magical circle he would draw with the mixture he was preparing, Evangeline could be out of the school grounds and out of contact with him for up to a week.

Normally, that would be cause for concern for everyone involved, but this time Konoemon suspected that Eva's concern for the class was more a concern for Negi. Why she was so affected, he didn't know. Had she seen something in him in Kyoto that reminded her of his father, Nagi? Was she that infatuated with the memory of the Thousand Master that she was willing to look after his child? Or was she merely using this as an excuse to escape, or at best, use this as good behaviour to have certain parts of the curse keeping her at the school (or at the very least, the barrier preventing her from using her magic) lowered to a point that her confinement was bearable for her in the long term?

Konoemon suspected it was many of these issues, that she was still in love with the man who had sealed her within the school grounds, as well as taking a shine to her captor's son, _and_ looking to score brownie points by helping out when needed in return for some concessions on her imprisonment. He just didn't know; she refused to say in her urgency to get back to the island.

It really was funny, he thought. Here she was, claiming to want to help the son of her worst enemy... the son of the one man that, even with all her ability as a puppet master, she could never have had.

Eva stalked around the office, looking ridiculous in her leather outfit. She appeared too young to give it justice – she may have been hundreds of years old, but being turned into a vampire on her tenth birthday had left her forever with the body of a child. "Come on!" she barked, "This has to be ready now! We don't know what's going on there! I need to get back!"

Konoemon smiled kindly, and gestured at the television recessed into the wall at the side of his office. "We're not in your resort any longer, Eva-chan. You can turn the TV on and find out what's going on now."

"Right!" the vampire said, brightening momentarily almost enthusiastically until she realised this meant it would be a while yet before the headmaster was ready to send her back into the fray. She stalked over to the television, turned it on with a vicious stab of her finger, and watched as the camera focussed on two of the girls from the class, apparently talking to themselves. Their conversation was muted in the background as the voice over announcer brightly explained that the first girls on the island were starting to go insane from the knowledge of their impending deaths.

"Because, really, how could a manga artist and a short librarian-type of girl win in Battle Royale? In a game with the ninja, the futurist, the robot, the samurai? These poor girls have broken down. And yet, anyone may win Battle Royale! That's the excitement of this game, the winner might be the least likely person in the class. After all, it's always the quiet ones who snap the hardest."

Evangeline muted the TV and turned back to Konoemon. "Hurry it up, old man!"

* * *

"So you're some kind of superhero?" Haruna asked, boggling. "Like, a real live magical girl?"

Ceres bristled momentarily at the word 'girl' but cooled back down so quick Yue had to wonder if she'd really seen the reaction. "Yes, I'm a... magical girl."

"Can you do your battle poses? Like, all the ones you strike when fighting? And when saying your name? And –"

"I, uh, can only do them when I'm actually fighting," Ceres said, a little uncertainly and confused. Then, as inspiration struck, "But... you know, if you want me to fight ya..." She let her voice trail off, and the rest was left unspoken. Yue noticed that her taller friend was seriously considering the prospect, and elbowed Haruna in the ribs.

"Ahem."

"What I mean to say is, what's going on here might be, um, more important if I'm... um... just don't tell people about me, okay?" Ceres ended up pleading. The glint in Haruna's eye said that could likely be an impossibility. "Because there are people who, as I said, will turn this place into a bloodbath if they know I'm here. I'm trying to save you, you know," she added, slightly sarcastically.

Yue's elbows stopped Haruna from saying anything again.

"And yes, we're very grateful, believe me when I say that." But Yue's nerves got the best of her, and she found that once she started talking, she couldn't actually stop. "However, how can you be a real magical girl? Magic doesn't exist, because it disrupts all known physical laws, and therefore magic is impossible. Unless the known laws are either wrong or there are laws of the physical world we just don't know about yet, and that could be bad because what if we do something that breaks one of these laws without knowing it, in such a way that it causes the end of everything? Yet, this whole concept of magic doesn't sit right with me, even if there are unknown laws. Who knows what knock-on effects using magical energy would have if you act using magic? The greenhouse effect could just be like a stepping stone to a global magical effect. And magical girls, don't get me started on them. They're always wearing short skirts and briefer tops and showing waaaay too much thigh-"

Ceres looked down at her mostly bare legs, starting to feel the evening chill settle along them.

At least, she hoped it was the evening chill and not a sudden bout of self-consciousness.

She held up a hand to interrupt Yue. "Woah. Just hold it right there. It's obvious I'm a magical girl, right? I've got the short skirt and revealing top, the bows and these special little booties that..." Ceres tapped her grey ankle-high boots together, hoping something exciting would happen, but nothing did. "... do absolutely nothing," she conceded. "But I can do the transformation from no one to magical girl, and I can do magical attacks. Just," Ceres added, with a warning glance at Haruna, "not right now while people might be watching."

"So for now, we just have to take your word for it," Yue replied.

Ceres nodded. "But that's perfectly alright, Yuecchi! Because she's obviously a magical girl." Haruna also gestured at the gear Ceres was dressed in. "Who else would wear something like this in public? Well, apart from cosplay idols and those people, but why would one of them be here?"

"Other than Chisame?" Yue asked quietly, but either Haruna didn't hear her, or she ignored her.

"No, this is a place and situation _only_ a magical girl would come to!"

"That's true," Sailor Ceres confirmed.

"And stupid enough," Haruna added.

"And stu- wait, no, why is it stupid to come here?"

Haruna indicated the collars Yue and herself wore. The change in her attitude from positive, full-on force of nature to bitterly upset was extremely rapid. "Because unless you have magical teleportation powers and can teleport these collars off everyone on the island at the same time, you might save us from the bad guys who tear us limb from limb, but you can't save us from exploding heads."

It was a sobering thought, reminding Ceres for the stakes she was playing for here. If Umiko got wind that she was here, even if she didn't put two and two together and link Sailor Ceres with Yoshihiro's missing General, she might try something stupid – like either sending in forces to attack the students directly, or manipulating Big Man, the television host of the Battle Royale show, to detonate all the collars at once just to spite anyone trying to free the teenagers.

"I can remove the collars, but don't say this out loud. I don't know if there are microphones around either. But... I can't do them all at once, not when everyone's all over the island. I'd have to..." Ceres' voice drifted off into a thoughtful silence. The seeds of an idea were coming to life in her head. Before coming to the island, she hadn't been entirely sure how she was going to stop this show from continuing, but getting everyone together in one location might be an idea worth trying. Ceres could at least remove the collars at the same time if they were in one place, but then there were all the soldiers, as well as anything Umiko might set on Ceres and the girls if she saw something was up on the television.

It was a troubling scenario no matter which way Ceres looked at it, but she sighed and squared her shoulders, looking brightly at the girls. She wondered how Sailor Moon made this look so easy; her face was beginning to hurt from the smiling. "So. Don't speak of this aloud. Don't talk about me after this, okay? If I turn up again, _when_ I turn up again, don't face me to speak to me, try not to look at me, don't speak directly to me. We want to keep me a secret from the people running this show as long as possible."

"How do you know they can't see you on television?" Yue asked, ever the pragmatist.

"Because we're not shoulder-deep in monsters trying to eat me," Ceres explained, before giving a cheery nod. "I have to go, but I'll check back on you both before long. It's getting dark now. You'll have to move shortly, but you should be able to come back in here to sleep, if this is where you feel safest. If you get in trouble..."

"You'll give us a magical device to call you at any time?" Haruna asked eagerly.

"... Kind of," Ceres replied, looking a little sheepish. "Yell, really really loud."

"Anything in particular?" Haruna pressed.

"'Help, help, I'm being killed,' has always seemed fairly to the point," Ceres suggested. "Look, I have to go. There were thirty of you. Unless something has happened in the last couple of hours, there's only been five confirmed deaths. The twins, a swimmer, a cheerleader and... they never made much of the other girl on the show, I'm sorry. I don't know her name offhand. There's a sixth unconfirmed death, apparently of a young blond kid in your class -"

"Evangeline!" Yue gasped in surprise. Were that many people really dead already? Were they really killing each other out there? Was this something she would have to worry about? Evangeline had always seemed to be so aloof and untouchable in class, but Yue thought perhaps that was just her demeanour rather than actual fact. But... "Unconfirmed?"

"She vanished in a big magical display," Ceres explained. "I'd guess it's more likely she got teleported out somewhere, didn't look like she went willingly. Looked painful as well. I think she's still around, but out of it. And... she didn't look like the little blond kid who came into the island with you all. She looked like a twenty-year old, in some kinky leather outfit."

Haruna shared a significant glance with Yue. "I _told_ you it was always the quiet ones! So, when are you going to let me in on your sordid secrets?" Yue blushed, and turned back to Ceres.

"I want to get around as many of the survivors as I can, give them hope, tell them ta keep moving and stay alive, and when I get some idea of how to get you all off the island, to get you to gather somewhere. But I need time, and at the moment, I don't think I have a lot. So please, stay hidden, stay safe, I'll come back for you when everything's set." She gave the two girls a reassuring smile that was mostly genuine. "You'll be safe. And remember, if you feel unsafe, if someone comes after you, run and do anything to stay alive, and _yell._" With that, Ceres turned, pushed off with her feet, and disappeared into the trees.

"Wow."

"You're speechless, Haruna?"

"Not quite, Yuecchi. That's just... after years of avoiding it in our class, I'm finally feeling inadequate as a woman for the first time in my life. My god, Yue, that was a _short_ skirt."

* * *

The woman with the long hair a thousand years hence turned, finding an albino girl standing behind her. She was dressed in a uniform of some kind that the woman didn't recognise as such, but appeared to be a school uniform. The girl's face was expressionless, red eyes staring back at the taller woman, unblinking. It was a little unnerving, to say the least. She was standing a little too close for the woman's immediate comfort, and she stepped back to give herself some space.

"Who... who are you?" she asked.

"All things come to this place. Buried beneath these ruins is the birthplace of humanity, covered by an unfamiliar ceiling." The girl finally blinked. "I am of this place."

"I don't remember seeing you here before," the woman said.

"Previously, the soul of the world was sited here. Now, the dominant soul has fled, and I am able to remain."

"Who are you, though?"

"You can call me..." the albino considered for a few seconds, her head cocked to the side slightly. The name was familiar to the woman, but she couldn't place it. "Seilei, would be appropriate."

"Well, Seilei, what's happened here? Why is this like... this?"

The albino's eyes didn't move from the woman's. "The dominant soul has fled this place, and the soul of humanity's birth had restored itself throughout the immediate region. I am an aspect of that soul, separated from you by only imagination. I am the Seilei that exists in your mind, while at the -"

"Yes, yes, and I am the Setsuna that exists in your mind, forget the metaphysical bullcrap, and tell me who you are and why you're here."

"I do not understand the first question. I have already answered this." Seilei seemed confused. "I am Seilei."

"I know you're not really here," Setsuna fired back, her temper growing as a sense of wrongness, of major unease settled across her shoulders. "You have no shadow."

Seilei glanced down at the ground curiously. "This is true. But this is because I am only in your mind. The me that is inside you is communicating with the me that is the soul of this place, and this is how you perceive that communication. Once, all was one. A single shining soul, a source from which humanity was separated and birthed and spread across the world and the moon in eons past. But there are barriers greater than that which we make within ourselves to make us individual, and those remain the barriers others make for us. These artificial barriers can lower people or raise them, depending on what magic words are spoken."

"You're speaking in riddles," Setsuna griped. "If you can't speak straight with me, then I have to find someone who will."

"Where you are standing right now is the safest place you could be."

"I don't understand."

"You do not need to understand, only to know and to trust. Have I hurt you? I have not intended to do so." Seilei seemed unperturbed by the possibility regardless. "I do not speak in riddles, but rather in truths uncomfortable and long-since forgotten. The barriers of individuality have made people forget what they once shared, but in their urges and drives to become as one body, they have some memory of that time of wholeness and try in their limited way to recreate it."

"I don't understand!"

"This is the secret of the soul, that everyone is interconnected but the connections have long-since died. Everyone is together but the great sadness is they can't help but feel alone. And so that loneliness kills the spark of greatness within the greater soul and human life cannot grow appreciably in that absence."

"I don't _understand!_ How many times can I say this before you get that _I don't understand a word of what you're talking about?_"

Seilei looked around the ruins of Crystal Tokyo, the decayed spires and domes collapsing into dust and memory. "The world has broken," she said, sadly, the only real emotion her quiet, silky smooth voice had offered in the conversation. "Man should not understand the night, and thus uses fire to protect himself from the dark. The world has no night, only a single unending day."

"Surely that's good?" Setsuna answered anxiously, trying to follow the conversation with the weird albino.

"Without night, the day is pointless," Seilei replied soberly, her tone flat and devoid of emotion again. "When the first soul split into three, what was left behind of the soul contained a mixture of day and night, one fragment contained light and one fragment contained dark. This was the first rending of humanity. But the white egg and black egg could not coexist without the existence of the souls of the third egg, which as they had to be one of the other but not both. White could not allow black to continue and black could not accept white, and so the eggs warred. For whatever excuses they gave, this simple unyielding truth is the cause of the matter. Without the mix of the third egg, the light and dark eggs of humanity's souls cannot coexist with one another."

Setsuna considered. "Assuming you're right, and you're talking about the White and Black Moon Kingdoms of ages past, then you're saying this world, Earth, is necessary for the balance in this... what, trinity?" Seilei was silent, but the slight smile that appeared on her lips told Setsuna she was right. It reminded her of something the original Serenity had said, a million years past: the credo by which the Moon Kingdom had lived – As Above, So Below. But, Serenity had taken that to mean that the balance in the heavens decided the balance on Earth, and had made a first strike on the Dark Moon Kingdom to wipe out the evils that were manifesting on Earth in ancient times.

But perhaps that wasn't the case. Perhaps, as this girl suggested, the real issue was that the war hadn't been in response to growing chaos on Earth below Luna, but because the light and dark moonsiders could not physically accept the existence of the other. If this was the case, then humanity would have to be the bridging that held the two together. If she was right, then the senshi could never win the battle against chaos, because it was intrinsically part of the human race. The White Moon Kingdom a representation of all the good humanity had to offer, the Dark Moon Kingdom the opposite. As long as such a duality existed in humanity's collective soul, true peace could never be won, only fought for.

And that brought to mind the blond girl's words from earlier: that Sailor Moon had been fighting for an ideal, but had not the power to bring it to fruition, and that Neo Queen Serenity _had_ the power to bring the dream to life, and had done so, but the dream was flawed. Where Usagi was at the moment in her personal timeline, she shouldn't have made Crystal Tokyo and unlocked the power within her. That power in the hands of an idealistic teenager was as scary as it was in the hands of a not-so-benevolent dictator, because both saw the world in absolutes, and only as they wanted to see it. Such a person would force their view on others if they had the choice – the dictator through fear, the teenager through love and compassion to make a better world for all.

That thought made everything click into place for Setsuna. In the past, rather than let events travel as they had to, Usagi had broken something somewhere and created Crystal Tokyo early, before anyone was ready to accept it and the ideals it meant. She created it before she was ready to accept what such an endeavour meant and had opted for what amounted to be the quick, easy fixes, and then compounded her mistakes, which had in turn created fear, mistrust, hatred against everything she stood for. Humanity hadn't taken being treated like errant children being forced into a role against their will very kindly and retaliated. Serenity had escalated the matter, not for a moment able to conceive she was wrong and unable to listen to those who would have counselled her to act slower and in good faith in humanity's aims and goals.

She had forgotten what made her special, in other words, and rather than bringing out the best in others had acted worse than any members of the Dark Moon Kingdom had done. That was the hard part for Setsuna to accept: the road to this hell was paved with such good intentions.

"But –" she said, lifting her head to ask the albino something, but the girl was gone.

"You are not alone," she heard the girl whisper from behind her, and she spun again, this time to see several armed guards in some kind of mechanical armour approaching slowly, almost nonchalantly. They smiled and waved at the people milling around the exhibits of the ruined city, and as Setsuna watched, they directed people slowly and calmly away to other exhibits. She snorted; as if she'd involve innocents in any fight, but she wasn't intending to fight. If the people of this time had become adept at fighting senshi, there was no reason to fight or resist: people, most likely her, would get hurt, and that was something she had to avoid if she had any way of making this right. She had to start with open and honest trust, especially in a situation where she didn't know the outcome.

Her random jumping through time had ended here. She hadn't jumped in over a week now. Either the Time Gate on Pluto was broken, or it had somehow sealed itself and was not responding to her anymore. She had nowhere to run, not really.

"This way," she heard Seilei whisper from behind her again, and when she turned, she saw the girl standing over near one of the closer spires. It was her tower, or what would have been her tower; she recognised the twist at the top of the spire that formed a viewing platform. But she hadn't been spoken of in the lecture she'd heard, and so was assuming she hadn't been able to get back in time to stop this future from happening. All she could do would be to try and salvage Usagi's dream from the wreckage she'd created.

The girl continued staring, and finally Setsuna realised perhaps there might be something she didn't know about, some way of salvaging this future into her own again, and that was what the girl was directing her to. After all, in her own way, she'd been very helpful and explanatory about things Setsuna hadn't even known as the Senshi of Time, and her reasoning about the White and Black Moon Kingdoms fit with everything Setsuna had ever known about both. Normally, what part of her was Pluto would confirmed or denied what the girl... what the image of humanity's soul... had said, 

but she had been curiously silent for a while now, and that worried Setsuna more than a little. Oh well, if she made her movement look casual, if there was nothing in the spire then the guards could still take her, and she could claim she was unaware she was being singled out.

The choice made, Setsuna turned to follow the girl down the rabbit hole.

TO BE CONTINUED..

SAILOR MOON SAYS:

Well, for those who was wondering what had happened to Setsuna after she'd rushed around setting everything up pre-Truth and through Love, now you know. It's been fun getting to this point these last couple of months, it's more writing than I've done in years and it feels surprisingly good. I'm hoping to be able to keep this up through the end of Justice and then into another couple of fics ;)

Next time: well, at this point, do you really need me to say anything? The characters are moving on their own, but it's time for the most demure and shy of the Rozen Maidens to appear. Oh, and we get a new catchphrase as well. Or is it an old one?


	10. Chapter 10

**DISCLAIMER:** Relatively standard stuff. Existing characters are properties of the people who made them up. Mitsuki, and several other characters are mine, and so's the story, hence ownership and copyright of them belongs to me. Contact me at my usual email address if you want permission to use anything I've written for whatever purposes. As per usual, I'm having formatting ripped out on upload, and now having line breaks introduced for no apparent reason. I apologise in advance for any formatting errors you may meet.

**Justice**

By

Raymond Cooper

Life On Mars

Setsuna made it inside the spire before the carefully pursuing guards showed up, which relieved her slightly. The girl, Seilei, had come inside this building – Pluto's own tower from what she dubbed the 'real' timeline – but as yet, since seeing her vanish outside when a flock of birds erupted from the ground between them, Setsuna hadn't seen the girl inside the tower, and didn't know quite what to do now.

Whatever she did, she wasn't going to provoke the guards. That meant no more transformations. She'd let her other self slip away immediately after arriving in this world to better walk amongst the people and find why it looked so different from her timeline, but hadn't needed to call on the power of Pluto since. With the guards, and the entire human race, intensely prejudiced against the senshi after their war on humanity a thousand years before, Sailor Pluto making an appearance would only make things worse in this place

Still, she had better make sure she had her transformation wand on her. She patted her pants pocket casually, expecting to feel the comforting hard length of the rod under her fingers, but no – nothing. She quickly checked her other pockets, and there was nothing. The silence of Pluto in her head now started to make sense. Was she no longer a senshi in this time after events in the past, in some kind of twisted paradox? Was it something done to the senshi remaining in this timeline to prevent them from rising as a threat again? Or was there another reason, like the potential power source running Crystal Tokyo pouring backwards from the future to power the past senshi no longer in operation?

Standing in the ruins of Crystal Tokyo, she suspected this to be the most likely of her immediate theories, but she just didn't know.

There was a noise behind her, and Setsuna spun around, half-expecting to see a guard coming in the door behind her, but instead the door was sliding shut. Solid crystal, cracked and blackened from the ancient war, the huge door grated across the ground in fits and starts before locking into place across the entrance way. Setsuna turned around again, suddenly feeling there was someone else in the room with her, but could see no one.

Outside, she heard the first of the guards reach the door, pounding on it with some item Setsuna suspected was the butt of some kind of gun. She wasn't too sure; she could only hear the noise. No vision from outside made it through the crystal, and no screens were active inside. In fact, the entire ground floor looked as if it had been stripped of anything that might be worthwhile to her inside the tower. More guards started banging on the door now, and Setsuna could also hear them yelling loudly, but could not make out what they were yelling about, or even if it was to her or to someone else. For that many to be there now, within thirty seconds of her entering the spire, they must have abandoned their attempts to reach her without panicking anyone, as well as stopped their actions to move people away so as not to be injured if things blew up in more ways than one.

The elevators to the other levels – crystal platforms normally suspended in directed gravity wells, but now lying discarded on the bottoms of their shafts – weren't working, and the doors into the few staircases were all blocked off by human locking mechanisms. With her transformation wand, nothing here could stop her from going where she wanted in the spire.

Without it, she was trapped on the ground floor until the air ran out.

* * *

It was evening now, and Usagi was resting in one of the hot springs out the back of the dorm building. Her head rested on the rock edging of the pool, the hot water working its magic on her aching insides even as Hotaru healed her wounds. She hadn't expected the early training to be quite so involved – most of the senshi had some kind of injury that Hotaru was healing or had healed – but she had to admit, she was getting better. The training... it was hard, but Cologne never dealt out more than Usagi was capable of handling... _if_ she applied herself, at least.

She sighed as Hotaru moved on to fix a sprained elbow of Rei's, and closed her eyes. She had to do this, she had to be better. Crystal Tokyo was the outcome, and she couldn't do it if she didn't have the hearts and minds of everyone on Earth. Based as it was in Tokyo, she couldn't do it without the people of Japan, and she needed them accepting magical people to be able to grow a giant city made from super dense crystal structures in the city's CBD.

Crystal Tokyo. Setsuna had always intimated it was built a thousand years in the future, after a major cataclysm caused by the Dark Kingdom, but why couldn't it be built now? Why wait for future evil to strike and cause enough destruction and death to force the construction of the city as a way of saving the world? Surely it would do better to build it during a time of peace and prosperity than during a time when people were doing it tough.

Usagi heard something above her, and opened her eyes just in time to see Hina Ichigo push her underwater and then jump on her face, giggling as her dress wrapped around her nose and mouth and her fingers dug into Usagi's scalp and her knees pushed down on Usagi's throat. Usagi swallowed water and coughed badly before sitting upright and out of the water. She grabbed the little doll, still giggling and wriggling madly as Usagi pulled Hina from her. She coughed up water while the other girls stared in surprise. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" Usagi yelled in shock.

Hina laughed in reply, deliriously happy, and Usagi made to throw her out of the spring and at a wall, but a sharp rap on her knuckles nearly made her drop Hina back into the water. Instead, Hina pried herself loose, and stepped down to the rock edging around the springs, and ran off laughing. Usagi rubbed her sore knuckles, still stinging from where Shinku had hit them with her cane, and glared at the red-clad doll.

"I won't have my servant abusing my little sister, it is most unbecoming," Shinku scolded Usagi. Usagi scowled back.

"Then stop your little sister from trying to kill me!"

"She's not trying to kill you," Shinku replied. "You really must stop imagining such things. Such flights of fantasy are not healthy in a woman your age."

"It's not a fantasy! She dropped a toaster into my bath before I came out here."

"It wasn't plugged in," Shinku reminded her.

"_And _she replaced the water in my bottle during training with acid."

"She was merely curious. And your water bottle was in no shape to be used after it melted like that. I doubt you'd have gotten down and licked the acid up, now. Am I right?"

Ignoring the doll, Usagi continued. "I dodged a safe on the way out here that fell off one the rafters in the hall. She was up there, too."

"Really, now, I think you're just imagining this."

"That's Usagi," Rei sighed pleasantly as the hot spring and Hotaru's ministrations did their work on her body. "Always thinking she's the centre of the world."

"I do not!" Usagi yelled, standing upright in the shallow spring all of a sudden to point at Rei. Makoto, embarrassed, handed Usagi a towel to wrap around herself. "And this is really happening! They keep trying to hit me in the head!"

Rei shook her head and tsk-tsked. "And anyone who knows you would know that hitting you in the head doesn't kill you, so what's the problem?"

"Rei, I swear –" Usagi started, but then broke off as she heard a noise. A familiar whistling. Her eyes opened wide, and she clapped her hands to the back of her head to ward off the incoming suitcase, but wasn't expecting it to hit her in the forehead this time. She went down again, pole axed. The suitcase dropped down on her stomach, and the latch popped open.

The lid opened, revealing a doll in an ornate full-length green dress, and long brown hair that hung down low to the ground as she stood. "Is it safe to come out, sister?" the doll asked Shinku.

Shinku nodded briskly, helping the other doll step daintily from Usagi's forehead to the rock edging of the spring. She spared an interested glance at Usagi, who was blowing bubbles under the surface of the water. "Oh look, I do believe she's learned to breathe underwater."

Again, Makoto came to Usagi's aid, lifting her from the water and making sure the suitcase hadn't done any permanent damage to her friend. Hotaru helped, healing the massive welt across her forehead.

"Carefully with that suitcase," Shinku snapped as Makoto moved it. The taller woman gave the doll an odd look before putting the suitcase down next to the two dolls and returning her attention to Usagi.

"Who's your new friend?" Rei asked, from the other side of the spring, looking curious now.

"This, Rei, is another of my cherished sisters. This is Suiseiseki, the most shy and retiring of the Rozen Maidens. She will be able to help us cure Usagi of these paranoid fantasies that people are out to kill her, also." The doll beside Shinku lowered her gaze, and shifted her feet as if to suggest she'd rather be somewhere else at the time, anywhere but here under scrutiny.

Hina ran at Suiseiseki with her arms outstretched. "Sister! Sister! It's good to see you!"

"It's the small one, yes," Suiseiseki said, in a quiet voice. "You were here second, yes? Not I, yes?"

"Yeees!" chimed Hina Ichigo.

"It is a shame, you must have been so scared by yourself, yes?"

"Big sister Shinku was here as well!" Hina reminded Suiseiseki.

"You must have been scared by yourself, yes?" repeated Suiseiseki, apparently ignoring Shinku's rising temper behind her.

"Shy and retiring?" Minako whispered to Rei on the other side of the hot spring. "She really seems to be pushing it with the Shinku doll."

Rei agreed with a nod. "But these dolls seem weird. Usagi said to keep an eye on them; she didn't completely trust them. I don't know why, they seem pretty charming."

"They've hit Usagi in the head three times now," Minako reminded Rei.

"As I said, they seem pretty charming. They're doing what we only dream about." Rei giggled, and a few moments later, Minako joined in guiltily. Usagi was nice, but sometimes just a little over the top. While neither wished her ill, it was occasionally nice to see her on the receiving end of some grief. Usually, it was at their hands. "But I wonder how many dolls there are in this range?"

Shinku overheard from where she stood, and her temper drained away. "In total, there are seven of the precious dolls created by Father."

"We all take part in the Alice game!" Hina announced proudly.

"Hush!" Suiseiseki urged Hina. "What is the first rule of the Alice game?"

"Um... it's pink and yummy?" Hina guessed. Shinku rapped her with her cane, and Hina yelped before adding, "We do not talk about the Alice game," in a quiet voice.

"That's right, yes."

"Oh," Rei said, exchanging a glance with the groggy Usagi. Maybe Usagi had something here.

"The Alice game is nothing. A pastime of the Rozen Maidens. Father has... made us special, apart from other dolls," Shinku explained. "For the right to be the only doll with a full soul, we must occasionally fight our sisters when awoken. But," she announced, looking meaningfully at Suiseiseki and especially at Hina, "I am not participating in the Alice game this time, and neither shall any of our sisters who reside in this inn. It is not proper and fitting of a lady to fight while staying under another's roof. Is this understood?" Suiseiseki and Hina each nodded to Shinku, who turned back to Rei. "There. It is agreed. You shall have nothing to fear from our 'Alice game'."

"That's good," Usagi grumbled, rubbing at her forehead now that Hotaru had finished healing the major damage. "Because I can't take much more of this."

Behind the frilly cuff of her sleeve, Shinku grinned sadistically.

* * *

Sailor Ceres had found a gathering of people, all holed up in a cave on a hillside. There seemed to be somewhere between five and ten people in the cave, but as everyone was close together, all panicky, and several seemed to be massively overpowered, Ceres couldn't get a strong individual count from a distance. As she closed, she realised this was the group led by the girl with the fan, and currently with the robot in tow. So, they were strong fighters. Not necessarily skilled, mind you, but strong all the same, and with that many strong people, it would only take the slightest mistake on Ceres' part to have this blow up in her face.

As a senshi, she thought she would be safe from just about anyone or anything on the island, but thinking something and being something were two completely different things. This was something Ceres had learnt time and time again in Nerima to her chagrin.

She became aware that someone was watching her. It was a careful presence, hiding itself incredibly well, but Ceres was very skilled in the arts of detection. Fighting against Yoshihiro while unpowered, she had had to be. Now, even as a General under Yoshihiro, she had to be brilliant at detection to avoid the occasional monster who remembered the new General had once fought against them with their greatest foes, and had a habit of winning.

This person, though... female. Very quiet, very stealthy. Thinking back, Ceres had been aware of the tickle in the back of her head since she had arrived in the area. She'd been watched the whole time, but the presence wasn't an immediate threat to the senshi, so Ceres had simply not noticed her on a conscious level.

Ah, yes, the ninja girl. It had to be. Ceres wondered then if the other girl, the gunslinger Mana Tatsumiya, was nearby also, but her senses weren't screaming at her. It wasn't likely. Possible, but not very likely, otherwise Ceres' red hair would be standing on end. No, it was just the ninja, then, curious about the new intruder to the island.

Well, nothing was to be gained by staying out in the trees for any length of time. And something seemed to be... familiar from the cave. She had to check it out, so Ceres started her climb up the narrow, overgrown path leading to the cave's entrance.

She was about twenty metres away when the combat gynoid attacked, from her hiding place behind a tree where she snapped a leg out at the height of Ceres' head. Without blinking, Ceres bent over backwards, turning the basic dodge into a graceful back flip catching the gynoid's leg in her own and pulling with the not-inconsiderate strength the senshi had access to.

Chachamaru went flying through the air, but her rockets activated and she stopped to hover. She whipped her right arm up, the surface of the arm shifting and disassembling to reassemble into a heavy blaster of some kind. Ceres didn't stand still long enough to find out how strong the weapon was; she flickered with pseudomotion, then was behind the gynoid with a leg spinning ready to catch Chachamaru in the small of her back. Chachamaru caught sight of Ceres, and moving as fast as she could possibly manage, was able to partially block the kick. Chachamaru's rockets strained to keep her from a damaging impact, but she still crashed through a tree trunk before managing to bring herself to a stop.

Before Chachamaru could make another move, though, Ceres held up a hand. "No, stop. This isn't what I'm here for. I'm Sailor Ceres and I'm here to help!"

"How could you possibly be here to help?" a biting voice asked. Ceres tracked it to the girl with the fighting harisen. "This entire island is dedicated to killing us! Or having us kill ourselves. How can we believe you?"

"Ask your robot here how long it would have taken me to take her down if I was being serious? Better yet, ask your ninja hiding over there in the trees." Ceres pointed back over her shoulders directly at Kaede's location. "Or just ask yourself: why would Big Man go to the trouble? The longer you all stay alive, tortured, the better for him to surpass his mentor, Demegawa. He needs you all to go down fighting. He'd seed this place with someone else like that gunslinger girl before he sent in super-powered support. Because _he_ doesn't know what he's dealing with here."

"And what is he dealing with?" Asuna challenged Ceres.

"A combat gynoid. Mages. Ninjas. Assassins. What my lieutenant tells me is a vampire."

"Lieutenant?" seized Asuna, eagerly.

* * *

"Lieutenant?" Asuna echoed on the television broadcast to the otherdimensional base where Yoshihiro and his forces operated. Umiko turned her face towards the screen. The girl seemed to be talking to thin air. She got closer to the screen. Was it her displaced rival, Ranma?

"Wow, she's cute," one of the girls now appearing behind Asuna said.

No, girl. Damn. _Where is he?_ Umiko wondered, before spotting one of Ranma's troops also in the TV room With a start, she realised she had seen this young woman around before. Similar to herself, her transformation from standard human had ended in a feline form, but unlike Umiko's, there seemed to be no transitional reptilian body the girl had gone through first when they had been operating from the alleyways of Tokyo and the surrounding districts.

She headed over to the catgirl, realising as she got closer that this woman had been following her around the base for several weeks now. Every time she turned around, the girl was there, peering around doorways or in through windows. Every damned time. As she thought about this, she got more and more angry, until she was burning with rage by the time she reached the girl.

"You," she snapped, "where is your master?"

"I do not know," the girl said.

"You must know," Umiko pressed. "All of us monsters can tell where our masters are with ease. You must know where he is."

The girl's hand started creeping up, as if she was hesitantly raising it to ask a question. "I don't know where he is," she repeated.

"I will find him, you know. And then I will find out what he's really up to." The girl's hand crept closer to Umiko. "Once I find out, I'll deal with him exactly like the Master should be dealing with him: rending him limb from limb and causing him delicious agony." The girl's hand crept too close to Umiko for her to stand it any longer, and she bit the girl's hand hard.

Tears gathered at the corners of the catgirl's eyes, but she didn't make a noise. Umiko spat the hand out of her mouth and spun away to leave the room.

After the door had closed behind her, Ayumu appeared in a burst of black. She absently patted the other girl on her shoulder, and examined her fingers. "Have them disinfected back at our rooms."

"Will our General be okay?" the taller catgirl asked, worried. "That one scares me."

"Our General will be fine," Ayumu affirmed with a nod. "Whatever she throws at him, we'll be there to back him up. Just remember, we all have to play our parts, and play them well. Our Master is relying on us, remember. No one else."

"Will our General forgive us?"

"Yes. Because that's what he does. Now," Ayumu said, her expression slackening and returning to its more common vacant expression, "it's time to work." She gated out, followed quickly by the catgirl.

* * *

"As I was saying," Ceres shot back, trying to speak over Asuna, "I'm here to help, but I can't do a lot if you're all talking to me! I don't think the cameras can see me, and it's good that they can't, because if they could there would be monsters like you wouldn't believe descending on this place and no one would get out alive."

Asuna finally quietened, and Ceres continued in a lower tone of voice. "I'm trying to save you all, but as I told the two girls earlier tonight, I need to do it secretly. I need you all to stay alive for now, and I have to get you all to meet somewhere when I'm ready to do my thing."

"Here would be the best place," Konoka confirmed. She took a look around, but the blackness of night was settling in now and there was no bright light to show much of anything. "We've got a cave, which Asuna says is easily defensible, and a lot of strong fighters, like Setsuna here." Konoka giggled despite the situation, and clutched at her friend's arm. Setsuna looked pained.

"I can't defend you if you keep holding on to me," the exasperated girl complained.

"Anyway," Ceres agreed, "that's a great idea. I can get people to come here, and then once I'm ready, we can either all do it here, or do it somewhere else. I'm not sure yet."

"My Master should be here soon," Chachamaru added. Ceres bristled extremely nervously at the words.

"Master?"

"Evangeline McDowell, the person you saw on television who vanished. She would have been banished back to the academy grounds, and I believe she will come back again." The gynoid looked a little dejected as she continued, "But until she returns, we are without experienced magical support." She eyed Sailor Ceres speculatively. "From your appearance, I would assume that you have a series of specialised magical attacks based around elemental capabilities. Your fight with me earlier also suggests a high degree of fighting skill across a range of disciplines and your willingness to commit to combat without making an effort to evade my attacks would also suggest either limited invulnerability or perhaps an extremely high level of skill leading to an abundance of overconfidence."

"Perhaps both," Ceres allowed with a smile as she relaxed. Not Yoshihiro, that was all she needed to know. "But that answers my question. But," she continued, returning her attention to Asuna, who seemed to Ceres to have taken on the mantle of leadership of this group by default, "do you have any problems with me sending people here?"

"No. I'd probably prefer it, easier to keep track of everyone. But, gathering that many people in one place, won't that make us a bigger target for Mana and Big Man? What if they send the soldiers out?"

"I think you've got enough strength between you girls and ninja girl back there to see them off." Ceres gestured at Chachamaru. "Just between you and me, even not like this I could beat ya, but I'm special."

"Special?" Satomi piped up from the back of the group. She gave a disbelieving snort. "Nothing human could beat the combined might of the Mahora Advanced Design Science Bureau!"

"... MAD Science...?"

"It's our new name," Satomi preened. "Or it will be once we get out of this mad place."

"Once we're off this island, and all is said and done and I can relax, I'll take ya up on that." Ceres looked around behind her. "It's dark. Everyone will be looking at settling down for the night. Best time for me to go visit." While she looked back into the forest, she felt something grate at the edge of her senses again. Something from behind her, with the group of girls. It was the familiar feeling. She turned again, and ran over eye over the group, not seeing with her eyes but instead with her soul, and what she saw surprised her. 

She pointed at Misa Kakizaki, but standing as close to her friend and fellow cheerleader Sakurako Shiina as she was, no one was really sure which of the two girls she was pointing out.

"Her. Keep her safe."

"She's just a cheerleader," Satomi said, without thinking.

"All the same," Ceres replied, still pointing. "Save the cheerleader, save the world. This world, at least. You make sure she survives, okay?" She directed this last comment at Asuna, who nodded emphatically.

"I don't intend to lose anyone here to Mana, or the others if I can help it."

"Good," Ceres said, before turning away again. "This is going to be hard enough by myself. What I might do, then, since we're all worried about what actions Big Man will take if we group you all together without some kind of distraction, I'll tell everyone to meet here in... a week. Seven days to go about their routines, they should be able to handle that. Until then, keep everyone here safe, and if you can afford it, get that Mana girl stopped."

"You could easily..." began Setsuna brashly, before she stopped. "Oh, you can't fight, because if you do you'll bring down a different kind of hell on us."

"One that's over much quicker," Ceres confirmed. "That's right. Now, I have to go. I've got to meet some more of these people out there, tell them how to act, what to do. Every day or two, have an argument for the cameras. Fight if you can, but do no or little lasting damage, just enough to make a show for the television team."

"Why?" Konoka asked. "That seems counterproductive."

"It stops Big Man from being bored," Setsuna guessed. "Stops him from deciding he needs to create drama by killing someone. We need to show a steady decline in our mental states; from what Sailor Ceres says, the show is fastidious in picking us apart, watching what makes us tick."

"That's right," Ceres agreed. "Remember, save the cheerleader, save the world." With those last words, Ceres hopped into the trees and vanished, leaving behind a group of very confused girls.

"Um..." Asuna said, turning around and scratching her head, "was it just me, or did I just hallucinate a magical girl?"

"Definite hallucination," Ku Fei said. "I having same hallucination. Think Konoe needs to find safer berries, or lots more of those."

As the girls headed back into their cave, carefully taking out any sign they had been outside as they retreated, Yuna took a look at Misa and Sakurako, and snorted. "Save the cheerleader, save the world my ass."

* * *

The guards had been outside the spire now for about two hours, searching for another entrance in, but as far as Setsuna could tell, all of them had been closed down when the main doors had closed. After her earlier thoughts, she had reassessed her situation: there was plenty of air in the tower for her to breathe, but apparently no food or water. She'd die from starvation or dehydration long before she died trying to spontaneously evolve lungs capable of breathing carbon dioxide.

Every so often, she felt a presence in the room with her, as if someone was coming into and out of the room, but she hadn't been able to see anything or anyone. The temperature dropped as well, Setsuna noticed, when this sensation occurred. _Maybe I'm being haunted, _she thought to herself. _Or the tower._

It wasn't a comforting thought. Where was she in this future? Surely she had made it back in time a thousand years somehow, and for better or for worse, stood by her Princess, and then her Queen. Yet she had found no evidence on this issue. For all intents and purposes, Pluto had disappeared before the senshi had fought Yoshihiro, as she had lived thus far in her own timeline before the Dark Kingdom warship shattered Pluto's control of the Time Gate at the edge of reality and plunged the Senshi of Time through a random cascade of portals before finally being deposited here.

Here, with no powers, unable to access the Time Gate and get back to a time when she could actually do some good, prevent this future from coming to pass.

Here, where the senshi were remembered as the most evil people who had ever and would ever exist.

Here, where Sailor Moon had made the wrong choice, which had then rippled and reverberated along through time, erasing everything that was good about her and her people and twisting it into something evil. The blond girl outside had been right; Sailor Moon had been fighting for an ideal, showing people of a better way of living through love and respect. She was super-powered, but the size of her heart far outweighed her strength or other abilities, which was what had made her special. But she was also a teenager, not yet capable of seeing things in shades of grey – only stark splashes of black and white. It was her experience that enabled her to keep fighting and bring Crystal Tokyo about when the world wanted, _needed_, change, but give her the power to make change early and what would happen?

Like any teenager, convinced she was always one hundred percent right, Sailor Moon would make the choice that seemed best for the world: blanket it in a forceful peace. Stop all wars, death and destruction, corporate rape of the world.

That had knock-on effects a teenager wouldn't necessarily think about, though. If the world asked for the choice, they would be ready for all the job changes and closures. They would be ready for the global economy to shift. They would be expecting things to be different.

Don't give people the choice, and factories won't work, jobs are lost wholesale, the economy of all countries crashes, inflation explodes, and without a model to replace the existing one, people are unable to afford to survive.

When they retaliate, and the people would, and you wipe their aggression, you open a new kettle of fish. Suddenly, people lose the will to live, and you wipe out populations. When that happens, the rest of the world goes into a panic and retaliates the only way it can: work around whatever is stopping their weapons and going all-out to wipe out a city of super-powered people.

Setsuna had no doubt many of the defenders of justice would have joined against the senshi. The descendents of Clow Reed, for example, or any number of alien visitors – Juraians, Saiyin, Kree. The parallel world of mages would also help out, and the world of the night.

The girl had mentioned vampires earlier. They and their ilk would crawl from their holes and exclusive private schools and fight alongside vampire hunters to protect their way of life.

It was all a huge mess, and had started from the best of intentions: to create a lasting world peace.

Instead, the world got its highest-ever death toll and a decade-long war, having to wait another decade while people squabbled over how to treat Serenity once she was in custody before finally executing her.

According to the books, serenity as a word now no longer peace and stillness; now it meant peace at the pointy end of the stick.

Again, the temperature dropped, and Setsuna instinctively looked around as she felt the presence again. This time, though, behind her stood a Chinese girl with her black hair tied up in twin buns. She had slightly flushed cheeks and a mischievous smile directed at Setsuna.

"Who are you?" the woman blurted.

The Chinese girl waggled a finger. "This is really not the place to have those sorts of discussions," she said, the smile not fading in the slightest. "Why have you come back here after a thousand years?"

"I've – I've been away," Setsuna replied. "Lost in time for a thousand years."

"Ahhh, my ancestor thought so," the girl replied. She glanced sideways. "And you thought so too, Sayo, yes."

"Sayo?"

"A ghost. Kind of passed down through the ages. She's been variously appearing to people through two families for about a thousand years now." The Chinese girl half-turned to the unseen phantom. "Go and make sure there's no Evangelions on the way. Or Gundams. Nothing with enough firepower to breach the walls. It's going to take time to repower the teleport systems. Yes, yes, I know, but we need time to get out of here, and I'd prefer not going toe to toe with an Evangelion again. They're scary things to fight."

"Those are the giant robots that fought the senshi?"

"Yes. But they're not robots. They're a combination of Human and Meltrandi DNA spun in a loom and wrapped in mystical armour to hold everything together." At Setsuna's look, she added, "oh, I know they say they're not Meltrandi in origin, but can you really imagine the Zentraedi not getting involved in the biggest fight this plane of existence had ever seen without damned good reason? There was an unexpected side effect of Queen Serenity's mind wipes, and that was a crashed observational vehicle from a Meltrandi fleet. Rather than get involved in the growing conflict and possibly all end up mindless automatons, the Meltrandi mothership and associated Zentraedi fleets stood by, waiting and watching to see the outcome. The remains were recovered and put to good use." She snorted a chuckle as she popped open a wall panel and began digging around inside, pulling out handfuls of crystal fibres and throwing them back across her shoulder to keep them in one place. She grabbed a thicker conduit and ripped that out, also. "I should know; my ancestor worked on melding the technology and magic into something workable. It was amusing, really, and the Evangelions are scary things and not used very often these days. But they'll bring one in."

"I'm not a senshi at the moment, though," Setsuna pointed out. "I don't even have my transformation wand."

"You're still using that?" The Chinese girl snorted again, this time in disbelief, as she turned around and regarded Setsuna. "I thought you were the most experienced of the original senshi. Are you sure you're Sailor Pluto?"

"Yes, I am. Sure, that is," Setsuna added, annoyed. "I've had it with me through all the random time-jumping I went through when the Time Gate was shattered, but when I arrived here... well, I've been here a week and only just noticed it being gone."

"Ahh," the girl nodded in comprehension. "You were asking Questions. People don't ask Questions anymore. It can bring about too big a response. But if it disappeared when you arrived here, it's because the possibility of your future is no longer in doubt in the here and now. In fact, if I wasn't here, you'd be what is technically-dubbed 'screwed'. Thankfully, I am here."

Setsuna regarded the girl curiously. "You look like someone I know of. Someone I was keeping an eye on."

"My ancestor again, no doubt," the girl replied proudly. "She travelled back in time a hundred years from her time to bring about a change in the way that magical people lived – bringing magic out in the open to the whole world, to try and make it something known, cause problems earlier than was expected to try and force some kind of human response to things before they got out of hand. But, she ran out of time when Crystal Tokyo was built overnight. She saw her nightmare, her history, coming true. The war, everything. She was prepared for the chaos, or so she thought, until she saw it in action. Still, she was one of the people who helped defeat the initial anti-technology spells. She didn't get home for another twenty years, though." The girl looked sad for a few moments, then cheered up again. "I'm actually named after her, you know. Chao. Pleased to meet you."

Chao plugged something into the wall conduit, and began threading the crystal fibres into the device. It looked vaguely biomechanical, with what appeared to be red strands of muscle holding the complex moving parts together in a tight ball. There was also some LEDs that shone through or behind the muscles. As the fibres were plugged in, the lights on the device burned brightly and then faded to a dimmer level. As the device was hooked up, Setsuna noticed the room brightening also, the walls coming alive with displays and controls.

This was more how she remembered things. She moved to a wallscreen, and using a finger traced a symbol that opened up an outside feed. The temperature chilled just as the image came up. As Setsuna turned around, she caught a roughly human-sized shape next to Chao.

"What? An Evangelion? This soon?" Chao snorted at the shape.

"An Evangelion," Setsuna confirmed, gesturing at the screen. A black and orange giant was striding towards Crystal Tokyo.

Chao sighed theatrically, before making the final adjustments to the device. "But I like this outfit!" she complained loudly before giving another sigh. "Okay. Sayo, make sure Setsuna stays safe. I'll try to keep the fight away from here. Once the system is ready to go, this light will come on." Chao pointed at a section of wall that was completely featureless. "Once it does, you come get me, no matter what. Okay? Right. Well, here goes." Chao walked to the front door, and placed her hand over the activation patch.

Setsuna grabbed her shoulder in alarm. "You can't be thinking of going out there to fight that thing," she said, disbelievingly.

Chao blew a quick raspberry at the door. "I'm not scared of them. They make me angry. They don't like me when I'm angry. I remind them of what they lost." With that, she slapped the door patch and stepped outside, quickly slapping the outside patch to shut the door again.

Setsuna returned to the screen to watch where the teenager was standing off against a massive giant.

"You are suspected of harbouring a senshi," the pilot inside the Evangelion unit boomed through an external speaker. "Turn her over now and you won't be harmed."

"Won't be harmed?" Chao yelled back, her tiny voice nothing compared to the booming from the Evangelion. "I've had friends you've said that to."

"Then we are not responsible for any damage that occurs."

"Somehow, I knew you'd say that," Chao said, before triggering something on her belt. Something huge filled Setsuna's vision, and battle begun in front of her.

TO BE CONTINUED..

SAILOR MOON SAYS:

Another chapter down! I can't believe this is the third or fourth chapter still on day 3 of Battle Royale, but there you go.

Still, next chapter: distant family visit the Evangelion. The result: round 1, fight! And speaking of the E's, Evangeline gets back to the island.


	11. Chapter 11

**DISCLAIMER:** Relatively standard stuff. Existing characters are properties of the people who made them up. Mitsuki, and several other characters are mine, and so's the story, hence ownership and copyright of them belongs to me. Contact me at my usual email address if you want permission to use anything I've written for whatever purposes. As per usual, I'm having formatting ripped out on upload, and now having line breaks introduced for no apparent reason. I apologise in advance for any formatting errors you may meet.

**Justice**

By

Raymond Cooper

When I Grow Up

Chao's clothing burst apart into shimmering motes of light as she expanded, her body growing rapidly to a ceiling height of sixty metres before the unstable molecules reassembled and covered her again. Instead of an abbreviated white dress over a black leotard, now she wore a skin-tight combat suit, black with strange white markings entwined over the surface. To Setsuna's eye, weak as she was with such matters without Pluto to advise, it did seem to be very much similar to the magical symbols Earth had developed from the memories long since lost of the Moon Kingdom's existence and technology, but what they meant Setsuna didn't know.

The now-giant teenager didn't hesitate, simply slipped forward on her feet as if moving without thought, dipping down low under the Evangelion's kneejerk reaction to swing forward at chest height before rising up and slamming a fist into the armoured behemoth's jaw.

The Evangelion slammed upwards and backwards, but turned its uncontrolled tumble through the air into a recovered flip, and it slammed down into a crouch on the ground, the left arm back for balance while the right rested on the ground to prevent the bioroid from otherwise falling forwards. Chao slipped forward again, leading with her right foot before dropping her hands down onto the ground, springing back up and landing with her right foot smashing into the Eva's jaw.

The head of the Evangelion snapped around with the force of the blow, but the pilot recovered before the shoulders turned too far, and the Evangelion continued spinning in the direction of the blow, rolling around Chao's outstretched leg as she headed towards the ground and a standing position, to deliver an armoured elbow to the side of the teen's head.

"Ouch!" the giant yelped, springing backwards, giving her head a quick, nervous feel to make sure nothing was broken. Apparently, nothing was, as Chao gave a yell and sprang back into combat within a few seconds.

Watching two giants of similar size duke it out with a fist fight made Setsuna giddy, as if the world had tipped suddenly sideways.

With a start, she realised there was someone next to her, someone transparent and apparently without feet, dressed in an old-style school uniform – even by Setsuna's thousand year old memories. "You must be... Sayo?" Setsuna guessed.

"Yes," the ghost replied with a nod. "It always takes people a while to see me. I remember the first girl who saw me. That was a long time ago. Chiu, I think her name was. Chiu-chan. She was so cute and naked."

"Um..." Setsuna reached for something to say, but the ghost, the ghost's topic of conversation, and the giants fighting outside all made it a little hard to think clearly. "Naked?"

"It wasn't bad naked, she was just on an island, naked."

"Naked."

"With thirty other girls."

"Right."

"Oh," Sayo rushed, waving her hands in front of her frantically in a negative gesture. "No! The other girls weren't naked. Just Chiu. Chisame. And they weren't all together. It was... oh, I know better now, but then it was scary. I thought they'd all be like me." She sounded a little wistful as her mind wandered. Dust fell through her as one of Chao's punches buckled a breastplate on the Eva. An forearm crashed down on Chao's arm, but the teen dropped her arm and let it swing with the strike while she half-turned to her right to stand perpendicular with the Evangelion, before dropping to the ground while twisting her legs through the Eva's – Setsuna could see from the forearm armour that this was labelled Unit-24 – and then scissoring her legs so the Eva crashed over. A quick bounce back to her feet, and Chao was moving around, watching for an opening as the Eva stood up. Sayo continued. "But I didn't want them all like me. Dead, that is. A few of them were by that time. More died after."

"Why are you telling me this?" Setsuna asked, as the Eva leaped towards Chao, dropping into a roll and coming up off its shoulders with force, slamming its feet out into Chao's midsection. The giant teen managed to block, but it was obvious the force hurt.

"Chao said you come from that time," Sayo said, turning to face Setsuna. "From the bad times. Right before the war. One of the lesser senshi got to the island we were being held on, and tried helping everyone, but couldn't save everyone. One of the girls was... she was bad. Evil. A survivor, the senshi said later on before she disappeared for good. What happened... broke one of the girls badly. She caused a lot of trouble in the war. It was very sad," Sayo sighed. "But a thousand years does a lot to dull the pain. Chao says it's not meant to be like this, that there was another time that her ancestor tried to create. Something better. And Chao thinks you come from this place. Well, Chao and the council. Was it really something better?"

Was it? Setsuna wondered. There had been great bloodshed and pain to bring about this time, and no one trusted the guardians of love and justice in this time... the giant Evangelion outside pounding into a teenage girl – albeit sixty metres in height – spoke volumes on that aspect. But other than this, the world seemed safer. Much safer than it could have been. But deep down, what she had seen over the past week was there was no love, only like. No passion, only mild arousal. No hate or anger, only disappointment. No sadness, just a melancholy of a planet that had forgotten how to feel so it could fight the evil that had tried to best it. A dead world, still populated, but by a race of emotional zombies rather than a dynamic race on the edge of expansion into the great unknowns. 

Like this, Setsuna knew even without the Time Gate to show her, that the future would continue as this was progressing. Humanity would continue to expand and succeed.

But was that all? Where was the joy, the passionate embrace after a hard day's work, the little quiet moments that reminded people they were living, breathing creatures rather than organic automatons? Little better than the Evangelion outside, but trapped in suits and work rather than armour. Setsuna shook her head. "I can't say," she said eventually. "Up front I want to say yes, yes it is, and scream it from the rooftops, but this has its good points as well."

"To you, personally, I mean," Sayo prompted.

"Then yes, where I come from is much better. There's much sadness that creates the future, but the future is full of love, peace, honesty... all chosen by humanity rather than forced. Something that people decide they wanted, rather than being told. They go to Sailor Moon for it, rather than her going to the people. And yes, it was much better. This place, this city... was a shining paragon of hope for what could be accomplished by love and fairness, a place that stood out in the darkness as a beacon of humanity. A memory of an ancient race, and a modern one, that as much screamed out 'I was here, I mattered once,' a memorial for a race that would continue into the heavens for eternity, a reminder of what humanity was capable of."

"It sounds very beautiful," Sayo commented wistfully. "I wish I could see it."

"Maybe you will," Setsuna said, before returning her attention to the fight outside.

"Chao Klan, you are a wanted terrorist," the Eva's pilot announced sounding slightly winded. The armour on the Evangelion was buckled and dented in a few places, but there appeared to be no serious damage. Chao, standing opposite Unit-24, was slightly winded, and had some grazes and scrapes where the boots and fists of the bioroid had connected. She also appeared to have a bit of a bump on her head. _A bit,_ Setsuna thought wryly, _it's larger than me._ Other than that, Chao was none the worse for wear. Certainly her defence hadn't dropped, nor had her response times. In fact, while breathing hard, the teenager looked positively excited to be in a fight, a smile on her face suggesting she hadn't had such a good workout in a while and was eager for it to continue. "If you do not stand down, we will be required to resort to lethal force. Stand down, now, and prepare to be taken into custody."

"Into custody? You mean disappear into some jail cell off Florida to be disposed of when the hubbub dies down? Or are you going to use my bones to mount an Eva frame on it? Huh?"

"You are inciting insurrection and violence and deception. As has been proven, the Evangelion series are not made from deceased Meltrandi or any part of Meltrandi genetic mat-" The pilot got no further, as Chao gave an inarticulate roar, and leapt at Unit-24, pushing it down on its back and grabbing its central breastplate segmentation with her slim fingers and pulling as hard as she could. The Eva howled, as did the pilot when the neural feedback hit, and Chao successfully prised off one of the plates, reaching in and grabbing a fistful of flesh, tearing and pulling until she could hold it in front of the Evangelion's eyes.

"This is Meltrandi! I know it's Meltrandi! I've seen the DNA sequences often enough – you'd think I know! And as you know, my ancestor was on the –" Before Chao could finish, a shoulder mount snapped open, and a handle jettisoned out to a suddenly waiting hand. Less than half a second later, Unit-24 had extended its progressive blade to full length, and so Chao wouldn't get sliced by the blade, she let go of the chunk of biological material and flipped back as the Evangelion tried to cut where she had been a moment before.

Her feet crunching down hard on the surface, smashing through the top layers of reinforced cement, Chao looked up, murder in her eyes. Setsuna realised that, even with the humming bladed weapon, Chao knew she could still take the giant robot, tear it limb from limb without major injury. But a steady thrum through the ground made Setsuna look around. To the west, another Evangelion. To the north was a third. And sure enough, from the south, there was a fourth. They weren't hurrying. Indeed, one held a large rifle, ad even as Setsuna watched, it fired at Chao. Chao's bodysuit reacted, however, and the streams of protons washed around her and into the ground at her feet as if she was a rock in a stream. Chao barely noticed. But no more shots were fired, and the Evangelions weren't hurrying. They knew Chao couldn't go anywhere, and sheer numbers would wear her down eventually.

Desperately, Setsuna looked back inside even as Sayo did. The wall panel took that moment to flash brightly as a light came on behind the crystal surface, and Setsuna turned back and bellowed, "CHAO!" as loud as she could.

Somehow, Chao heard her, and glanced her way before having to quickly dodge another attack from the prog knife. She gave a decisive nod, before returning her attention to Unit-24. Circling like a tiger, the Evangelion held the humming blade before it in a sideways position, across its body, ready to use it to block or make a rapid strike. Chao's hands were similarly loose just out from her sides as she turned with the robot. The quick flick of her eyes she gave to her sides as she turned told Setsuna that the teenager had seen the other Evangelions approaching, and was ready for them if they moved faster.

Chao wasn't stupid, though, even as full of rage as she was. Her circling took her close to the ruined spire in which Pluto and Sayo stood, and as she stepped past the doorway, one of her hands thumbed the activation trigger on her belt again. Her bodysuit blew apart as she collapsed in on herself, her form shrinking many times over, before the bands of shimmering light reassembled into the dress she had been wearing previously. Even while shrinking, Chao didn't waste time. As soon as she was small enough to fit through the door (still about twice as tall as Setsuna) she pushed through, grabbing Setsuna as she went and dragging her along behind her at a fast clip. Once she had reached her normal size, Chao still dragged Setsuna along through sheer force of will.

Behind them, Setsuna could hear the Evangelion reach inside the front door and begin lifting. "Do we need your device?" she asked Chao, gesturing back to the front room where the biomechanical node was still plugged into the wall.

"Nope, we need to get deeper, and quickly."

"Why? What's –"

"There was a teleport chamber built under this tower. It's untraceable. We need to get there, fast, before they break something. Ah," Chao added, glancing up at a featureless crystal panel above a recess into a wall, "stand in here."

Chao joined Setsuna as they stood huddled close into the wall, Sayo drifting along with them, then the floor started and dropped down below the level of the corridor. The elevator travelled about fifty metres down before stopping in a wide chamber filled with crystal technology, shining brightly in the dim light. The Chinese girl ran for a crystal, flat-topped, extruded from the ground before a circular pad. "Hurry and get into the matrix," she snapped, pointing towards the pad while the fingers of her other hand danced across the top of the flat crystal. Sayo and Setsuna did as bade, then a few moments later Chao joined them.

There was a loud roar from above as the Evangelions got bored waiting for their prey to come out and simply started lifting the tower from its foundations. At the same time, the world hissed and spat and flickered, and then Setsuna was somewhere else.

* * *

Elsewhen, the air spat and crackled in a similar manner, then a hole in the air opened, and a young girl in leather fetish gear was spat out unceremoniously into the ground. "Konoemon! You old bastard! I'll get you for this!" She waved her fist back ineffectually, knowing that she wouldn't. The transport had seemed to be harder on the old man this time. Perhaps it was the problem of getting around the curse in this way he had that had caused the strain on himself – he'd found something about search and rescue on extended school property in the runes, and so had to designate the island as temporary school property using ancient magic. It helped that apparently, there was great magic surrounding this island. In her time in her resort while waiting for Konoemon to heal, Evangeline had done a great deal of reading, looking for the island she and her classmates had been abducted to, but she had been unable to find anything in Japan's surroundings that matched what she had been on.

That may have meant that it was further afield, and there were far too many islands in the world to check each separately, but how many had Japanese-styled school buildings? None, from what Eva could tell in her research. Oh, she found references to schools of foreign powers in various countries, like some French boarding school for young ladies in Vietnam, various branches of an elite academy for the rich around the world - Evangeline had actually attended this school's Japan branch some thirty years before and had taken designs on a man named Suoh before his eye had been captured by another, or so she fondly recalled while researching – and even one which seemed to accept human students in the twilight world of the standard, everyday monsters. But in all her research, she hadn't found an abandoned Japanese-style school on an island that matched the one she had been on.

So either it was being hidden, or there was something else at work here.

She got to her feet, her power cloaked as soon as she'd left Mahora Academy, and looked around. She was in an open field, nothing around her for hundreds of metres except long grass. There was lots of long grass, with trails through it as if many things had run through the grass. Where was she? Isla Sorna again?

"No," she chided herself quietly, "don't be stupid." She glanced around, making sure no one was watching, then allowed her glamour to sweep over her, changing her form to that of an incredibly sexy teenager, still dressed in the brief leather leotard with slightly more skin showing than before. 

She gave herself a once-over; yes, everything was looking right and had filled out properly. Her magic seemed to be working right, which was good, because there was some magical resonance here she didn't understand. She swept her cape around her, looked up and launched for the sky.

Ahh, it felt good to be airborne again. True, it really had been only four days or so in real time since she had flown at Kyoto, but there she'd been involved in a fight with that annoyingly skilled young boy Fate and the demon Sukuna, helping to save Negi Springfield. She didn't know what it was about the son of the Thousand Master, but she was drawn to him. Maybe she wanted a rematch? Or maybe he reminded her of his father, his father with that delicious... Eva shook her head. _Eye on the prize_, she reminded herself. _But what if the prize is Negi himself?_

From up high, the island didn't resemble any that Eva could remember having seen, but up here the magical resonance seemed much more powerful. Almost as if she could reach out and touch it...

On sudden impulse, Evangeline stuck her hand up above her, and it came into painful contact with a magical barrier. It threw her back towards the ground, and she managed to stop herself after being thrown a few dozen metres. It was powerful, if it was able to throw her that far. A quick circuit of the island from the air, cloaked from sight from the ground, showed that the barrier extended the whole way around. She didn't have to hide too hard, as the sun had gone down and it was now dark. The barrier lay about half a kilometre from shore on all sides, and Eva suspected that the outside world she could see through the invisible barrier was just an illusion, but even with her magical power, she was as unable to break the illusion as she was the barrier.

This was serious stuff. Eva was the end boss, as she referred to herself, at the top of the game, and for something to make her feel this much like the child she resembled, that she had been over half a millennium ago... it was scary.

She sank back down to the island, deep in thought. If she'd only brought Chachazero with her, she could have easily gotten inside the school and to Negi and found out what was keeping him so long. She'd expected him to have this place blown wide open by now. That said, he'd taken a pretty bad bash to the head while she'd been in the classroom before being turned loose outside, and likely had no wand or staff with him. If he couldn't use unincanted spells, and so far he hadn't given any indication he could actually do that, even if he did have some interesting ideas on re-channelling his magic back into himself for a power boost, then there was no way he could do magic without either the staff or wand. But did she want him doing magic?

As much as Eva wanted to go in and rip people to shreds (and could actually do just that) she was also aware she had to keep the existence of magic from the normal world. Oh, the world at large accepted the occasional magical hero, but thanks largely to the efforts of the physics professor Ueda, magic was largely debunked in Japan and rarely spoken of anywhere else in the world. The magical world liked things that way, hence why they kept sending inept bunglers Ueda's way, and crazy old men to America to make teenagers waste their time chasing them in natty costumes rather than allowing them to chase the actual demons, trolls and rogue mages that hid just below the surface of human society.

Privately, Eva thought it would all boil over one day, and magic would become widely known, but she'd been thinking that for a very long time now, and nothing ever came of it.

So, without the 'ripping people to shreds' option available to her, Evangeline had to act secretly. That meant no killing, no maiming, no disappearing soldiers, no storming the classroom to retrieve Negi. No, she had to be subtle.

She looked at the ground around her, thinking. If she had just brought a doll with her...

... or, she realised looking around at the long grass, sticks, and other items around her, made one herself...

* * *

There was a tremor through the island, Sailor Ceres felt. Something was here, something unaccustomed to making baby steps in its life. Something female. She wondered, was this the Master that the female robot was talking about earlier in the evening? But as quick as it appeared, it cloaked itself and hid. Ceres had more important things on her mind at the moment, though.

For a start, Ceres didn't know if this transformation had a time limit. The other senshi seemed to be able to hold this form for hours at a time, but Ceres didn't know if that was based on magical power levels, training, or even birthright if not just part of the package, and it could be embarrassing and potentially extremely disastrous if Ceres reverted back even to her cursed female body while on this island.

No doubt Umiko had lots of systems in place to detect anyone new. About the only thing she wouldn't expect would be the senshi, sidelined as they were by their current lack of popularity – unless, Ceres realised, the senshi had the brilliant idea of trying to reinvigorate their image by saving these kids – or at most Umiko would only be searching for the nine commonly-known senshi.

Still, there was a pink one that was referred to sometimes while Ceres was around the others, senshi and Dark Kingdom alike, so perhaps there were more out there than Ceres realised, and maybe Umiko had taken that into account.

Personally, Ceres didn't think that was likely, though, as no hordes of monster had arrived to ravage the enforced inhabitants of the island. It was a scary way to test her beliefs about Umiko and her competence, but it was one that paid off.

Idly, Ceres wondered what Ayumu was doing right now. Most likely she was stalling Umiko, considering her recent behaviour. There was more going on with that girl than Ceres could fathom for the moment, but that wasn't an immediate problem, and if Ceres was right, not really a problem at all.

She felt someone ahead of her, near a small stream. She could smell smoke, only a little bit, and it smelt damp, as if the wielder was trying to light sticks and leaves that weren't yet dried out completely. With a silent leap, she touched down in a clearing on the stream's bank, behind a girl with her hair pulled sharply back who was crouched down and swearing as she tried to get her green kindling to light. Nearby, a laptop's monitor was letting out a decent amount of light to see by, but it was half-closed, so the light didn't propagate as far as it normally would have in these conditions.

"I can help with that," Ceres offered, stepping forward into the light.

The girl started, spinning around on the ground and pushing her glasses up her nose with one hand to peer suspiciously at Ceres. Her other hand clutched a thin stick from her 'fire'. "Stay back!" Chisame warned.

Ceres held her hands up in a non-threatening manner for the second time that evening. "Whoa! I'm not tryin' ta hurt you or anything. I'm here to help you."

"Help me? Ha! In that outfit? What are you packing, hard drugs?"

Ceres looked down and not for the first time wondered why the senshi uniforms were so impractical, when they could have offered so much more protection to the arms and legs and a mask for the face. Presumably, the former was a moot point because the senshi were effectively immortal and indestructible by most means, and the latter was taken care by some kind of magic of advanced technology that stopped anyone from recognising one of the senshi when out of their costume, unless specifically told about it, or if, as with Ranma, one was exceptionally skilled at identifying people through non-visual methods. "No, I'm packing magic and according to one of your friends, the best set of breasts she's ever seen."

Chisame snorted. "You haven't met Chizuru yet," she snorted, but then took another look. "Maybe you might not have to. But how can you help?"

While Ceres didn't have any clue as to the activation phrases of her magical attacks, and suspected she wouldn't until she actually needed them, she did still have a mastery of martial arts. Focussing her ki into one of her hands, until it manifested as an apparent roiling globe of red plasma, she slammed her fist down into Chisame's pile of sticks. Chisame ducked, expecting to be showered in splinters, but Ceres stood upright again, removed the lighter from Chisame's free hand, bent back down and lit the pile of kindling.

Amazingly, it was still standing upright.

"What did you do?" Chisame asked.

"Uh... I just dried out the wood and leaves in your pile by gathering my energy up in my hand and –"

"You know, forget I asked anything." She regarded Sailor Ceres through her glasses again. "You're not from the island."

"No, I'm not. From your class, I mean. I am from this island, a nature spirit that does not want to see any more innocent bl-"

"You can stop that, too. You're a person. Some kind of sick, deluded cosplay freak, I'd think." Chisame snorted again, looking away from Ceres for a moment before her eyes slid sideways to look at the other woman. The senshi stood there mutely, head slightly cocked to the left, waiting for Chisame to continue. "Okay. Why are you here? Some sick game by Big Man? How did you find me? Are you -" Chisame stopped herself from adding, "a fan?" but it was obvious the person opposite had to be. Hadn't she appeared in a similar dress six months earlier in Chiu's World? She'd copied the costume from those worn by Sailor Moon and... oh. "You're with Sailor Moon?" Chisame guessed out loud.

Ceres nodded. Then, after a pause where she looked upwards thoughtfully, she nodded again. A third pause, then she shook her head slowly. "I'm... kind of to the left of Sailor Moon, you could say."

Chisame's eyes flickered to the left, but there was nothing there. It was stupid. _Wait._ Her eyes flicked to the right, Ceres' left. Nope, again nothing. She sighed again, angrily under her breath. "So," she asked in a dangerously light tone of voice, "Just who are you here with?"

Ceres recognised the tone of voice from Akane Tendo, his former fiancé. It was a voice that normally promised much pain of one kind or another. "I'm Sailor Ceres, and I'm here to rescue you."

"Oh! You mean... not _here_ with Sailor Moon, but you fight alongside her," Chisame relaxed a little. "Are you going to get me out of here now?" she asked a little eagerly.

Ceres shook her head. "Unfortunately, not yet. I can't risk taking anyone out until I can get all those collars off everyone at the same time. I don't want to start rescuing people just to have everyone die."

"Oh."

"And another thing, I can't be seen on the cameras, but you _can_ be seen talking to me on the cameras. So, if I'm around, just try ta, I don't know, act casually. And don't say my name."

"Right," Chisame agreed, nodding to herself.

"Just for safety's sake. I don't want a horde of monsters to descend on this island and kill everyone, you know? It's just... yeah. I want to make sure you're all safe before I can do anything." Ceres pointed back the way she'd come. "A girl called Asuna is over in that direction, in a cave partway up a hill over there. I'm telling everyone to meet over there in a few days. I'll get back around, let everyone know when it's safe to move, and then we'll get everyone there and I can get you free." Ceres looked around, feeling out with her senses. No one else seemed to be nearby, but you could never tell. "Also, for the next few days, continue acting as normal. Just keep moving like you do, keep doing whatever you do. If you see some of the other girls, maybe fight, scream, scare each other off – anything for the cameras. The weirder, the better. Anything to keep the production crew from killing one of you at random."

Chisame nodded mutely.

"So, I've got to go still. I've got to find some more people, tell them the same thing. If you need help, just shout out really loud. So long as I can hear you, I'll come running."

"Shout your name?" Chisame asked.

"NO! No," Ceres added a little quieter. "Just something nonsensical. Anything but my name." Ceres gave a little wave. "I'll see you round." She couldn't resist. "Chiu-chan." With Chisame's outraged squeal, Ceres bounced off into the night.

Well, watching reality TV was good for something after all.

* * *

The world Setsuna found herself in was red, that was her first thought. There was a roaring of great beasts, and with a start she realised that the redness looked like muscle and tissue and sinew and flesh, a giant mucousy tunnel winding away into eternity. Only the reassuring hand of Chao in hers kept her from screaming out loud to echo the beasts.

It was only a few seconds before the turning path that Setsuna realised looked like the oesophagus of a giant dumped them into a dusty room surrounded giant machinery. Massive teleport pods stood either side of the pad where the two stood, and as Setsuna looked around, Chao stepped down and headed over to a glassed-in observation area.

"We're back," she announced through the tinted glass. "She was there, just like you thought."

A figure behind the glass nodded, and as Setsuna approached, the door opened to reveal... someone she thought she wouldn't see again.

"Makoto?"

"Welcome back, Setsuna," the other senshi said. "You've been gone a long time. It's good to see you back again."

TO BE CONTINUED..

SAILOR MOON SAYS:

Man, it bits forgetting your MP3 player at work. I hope it's there tomorrow when I get in...

Next time: Makoto's big plan.


	12. Chapter 12

**DISCLAIMER:** Relatively standard stuff. Existing characters are properties of the people who made them up. Mitsuki, and several other characters are mine, and so's the story, hence ownership and copyright of them belongs to me. Contact me at my usual email address if you want permission to use anything I've written for whatever purposes. As per usual, I'm having formatting ripped out on upload, and now having line breaks introduced for no apparent reason. I apologise in advance for any formatting errors you may meet.

**Justice**

By

Raymond Cooper

The Greatest View

_How is everybody? It's Chiu-chan here! _Continue acting as normal, she said. _How is everyone today? My holiday is going great! Chiu is very happy here!_ Normal for Chisame meant keeping up the broadcasts on her webpage. Today, she was taking a chance and appearing in her swimsuit, with the class tag removed, the stitching carefully picked out with a sharp rock. _Tropical holidays are the best, don't you think? Chiu wishes you were all here._ Yeah, anything to have someone else to kill the others for her, or better yet rescue her from this hell. _It's very warm here, and Chiu has been swimming. Lots and lots of swimming! Isn't that great?_ Great, yeah, sure. There were leeches in the creek, she knew it, she just couldn't find any on her when she got out of the water. If one managed to somehow get beneath her swimsuit, or even worse, attack her while she was skinny dipping... damn it, she could feel herself blushing. _Chiu will let you all in on a secret. Chiu met a girl last night... a magical girl like a fairy. _Let the audience make of that what they would. _She may have been here, she may not have been here, but she was magical and made Chiu very happy. _True, from a certain point of view. Sailor Ceres had given her hope of getting off this godforsaken island. For the camera, she did a little dance, acting like a cat. _Nyao nyao I smell fish nyao._ Then, realising what that had just followed on from, Chisame blushed again. A little too much innuendo, she thought. _Chiu-chan has to go again, but it's been great seeing everyone! I'll read your messages today, everyone be well and safe!_

"And get me off this island," Chisame muttered after turning off the webcam.

But she had a problem, one Sailor Ceres had pointed out the night before. Ceres had known she was the great web idol Chiu. Did the people off the island know now? Was she just making some giant fool of herself? Was she a giant joke now her life had been laid bare?

Laid bare.

Chisame blushed again, this time a deep red all over. She remembered the times her tropical bikini had fallen apart just after switching the cameras off. Did that mean that cameras around her had recorded her nakedness? Were naked photos of Chiu now floating around the island?

_Tap tap tap._

Chisame started. That was the sound of the laptop's keys being pressed. She spun around, half-expecting to see Mana or one of the other girls there, but there was nothing.

_Tap tap tap._

Chisame peered closer at the monitor's screen as words typed up slowly into a document, feeling a chill as she leaned forward.

_I see you._

Chisame shivered, and not because of the drop in temperature. She spun around again. "Who? Who is it?"

_Tap tap tap._

Chisame turned back to the laptop, watching as more characters appeared on the screen. This was very spooky. "Who are you?" she demanded, but her voice wavered with fear.

_I am a friend._

"Sai-" Chisame broke off, remembering Ceres's edict to not say her name out loud. "The grey girl?"

_No._

"What's your name?"

_I cannot find the characters, oh, here we are. Sayo. My name is Sayo._

* * *

"Where are we?" Setsuna asked as Makoto and Chao led her further into the complex. Huge rusted pipes hung low below the ceiling, leaking oil and water onto the grated floors. Every half-dozen metres, structural supports held the walls up. Makoto headed the group, walking calmly with a torch, while Chao held Setsuna's hand and directed the elder senshi through the maze of corridors.

Eventually, they reached a medical facility. Other people were gathered here, eating, drinking, helping others. Once the group was inside, Sayo drifting in behind them, Makoto turned to Setsuna. "It's been a very long time."

"Only a few weeks for me," Setsuna replied.

"Time travel. It does your head in so easily." Makoto turned to the Meltrandi beside them. "Chao, go get some refreshments. Take Sayo with you. I've got to talk with Setsuna here."

"Okay." Chao vanished into another room, the ghost following along behind like a happy puppy.

Makoto led Setsuna into a doctor's office and shut the door. "It's not that I don't trust any of them. It's just... I haven't seen another of the major senshi in nearly a thousand years. I want some time with you to myself."

"A thousand years?"

"It's almost a thousand years to the day that everything went wrong. Only another couple of days."

"I don't understand. What happened?"

"Usagi happened, is the short answer, but it was a combination of events. It was so long ago..." Makoto passed a hand in front of her eyes, sweeping some hair up behind an ear. "I'd like to say I could remember everything and tell you exactly where we went wrong, but we still don't know. I know... I know Sailor Shiva awoke about a week from now, a thousand years ago. She showed up at the dorm you had directed us to." Makoto's hand strayed around her mouth, deep in thought. "Usagi... she had thought for a few months that we should be making Crystal Tokyo a reality then. Bring world peace and everything. But it all went wrong. We didn't have public support at first, and when we did... that's when Usagi did it. Replaced a chunk of Tokyo with Crystal Tokyo, and she expected everything to go fine. But, obviously it didn't, and we lost the war." Makoto laughed bitterly. "We didn't want to fight. We didn't want to kill. We thought Usagi was making mistakes and we told her so, but she was convinced that what she was doing was right, because it would lead to a global peace."

"Had she lost it?" Setsuna asked.

"No, no, not at all. Usagi was – Usagi. Acting from the heart. She could never understand why people just didn't feel or believe the same way she did. Doing what she thought was best for others without asking the others if that was what they wanted." Makoto shook her head. "We were young and stupid. We stood by her, even though our instincts said otherwise. We thought she'd stop, but as the war dragged on, she took ever increasing steps down that road she couldn't come back from. The forced recognition spell cast by the Mages world was the last straw for many of us. We could no longer hide, no longer melt away, although we had tried. Minako and Rei were dead. We'd lost a small number of the minor senshi. And things just kept getting worse. Ami and I... we tried to get away, but we were mobbed in England. Ami was killed, I was captured by the Mages and put on trial... mostly to avoid the killing, I think. I spent five hundred years in prison, and then the human world mostly forgot about me, and the Mages let me out. I've only been able to come back to the real world in the last century."

"What's going on? Where are we?"

Makoto gestured around the utilitarian space. "We're currently in an abandoned UAC Mars Base. It was lost, oh, 2140s or 2150s or so during a Dark Kingdom incursion. They'd learnt a lot in that time, and were much more effective at co-opting humans into their forces by then. There were no senshi, so the colony would have been a loss if there hadn't been a contingent of UAC marines on site."

"But why are you here? Shouldn't you be on Earth?"

Makoto shrugged. "The Earth government doesn't know I'm here. If they did, trust me, they'd be here. But for the moment, they don't know and that means we're safe here."

"Safe?"

"This base has the highest concentration of senshi, Zentraedi and other 'malcontents'," Makoto stressed the word as if it rankled. She even wrinkled her nose as she said it. "We're here because it's safe here to plan, but we don't have a lot in the way of strength. We have thirty Zentraedi in total, and seventeen minor senshi, and now f... three major senshi. No warships, nothing. We've got one thing in our favour: below this facility is an old Moon Kingdom site. A city or something. We've found artefacts there, which was what was being dug up by the UAC teams. They found old carvings showing the monsters arriving and telling of our fight against them, before one final great being of light sealed them away while preserving the souls of her people in perpetuity to protect against them if they ever came back. Those souls, we think, were us senshi."

"Makes sense," Setsuna commented.

"But there's everything down there. Terraforming technology, weapons, teleportation. The wormhole technology you experienced before. It's all based on old Moon Kingdom tech. We have a way of getting to Earth, but what do we do when we get there? The world as it is, is no way to live. No one has any joy or anger or other emotional extremes. They've crippled themselves to prevent another Usagi from happening. It's not good, Setsuna, and we can't just sit by and watch the neuter themselves out of existence."

Setsuna sat back and considered. "There may be another way."

"If you could have time-gated back to the past and changed things, you would have done so already. So I'd guess your wand no longer exists."

"And Luna's not around to make more, right?"

"Luna died trying to rescue Usagi, yes."

"So that's that, then."

"But you don't need the wand."

Setsuna looked up, curious.

* * *

Mana knew there was something different in the island. She wasn't sure what it – the birds sounded normal, the other sounds of the forest seemed normal. Of course, Mana was on the edge of forest and grassland, and she'd felt the evening before something powerful tingle on the edge of her awareness. It had been a sound, but the sound felt... familiar. A quiet crack as something arrived. Teleportation. Through the evening, Mana had realised it was the sound Evangeline had made in Kyoto recently when she had arrived – even over the sounds of fighting going on around them all, the sound had cut quietly through everything. Maybe it was something that Eva did to frighten people into submission – an _oh no, the puppet master is here! We'd better give up!_ kind of deal – or perhaps it was something Eva didn't recognise as a sound herself, usually being focussed on killing someone after teleporting.

Whatever. Evangeline had to be back on the island. But there was something else... and that something else worried Mana.

She'd heard people talking, people fighting through the night. A quick examination of the island would show whether anyone was dead. And in the stillness of the morning, with the first move to avoid the exploding collars taking place, Mana would be able to hear for kilometres from the right vantage point whether anyone had been killed from the tone of voice and sounds of footfalls.

She had found the mountain two days ago – more of a tall hill, really, with a rocky ravine leading up the back of it – and it was perfect for listening in on things from. It was covered enough in trees to make someone invisible to all but the most observant of people, and it was high enough and situated in exactly the right place to have sound from across the entire island reflect back up to a point on the top. Mana had decided she only wanted to use it in case of emergencies, as she expected someone to go there and try to make a signal fire, or as high ground from which to strike – or even Kaede, looking for her. Once there, Mana would make a slow circuit to make sure no one was on the hill, then begin her ascent. Once at the top, and assured of her solitude, she would assemble a small hide from sticks and leaves, anything to break up her outline and give her some cover. Additionally, she knew some techniques to mask her body's energy signature that people like Kaede would be able to detect.

Not for the first time had she wished her backpack contained a ghillie suit. While impractical for close-up fighting, at Mana's preferred form of ranged combat, the suit would break her silhouette up invaluably. But if wishes really came true, Mana's backpack would have included a sniper rifle.

She got up, not needing to stretch as through the night she'd been selectively tensing and releasing individual muscle groups. She took a single look around her, turning on the spot to make sure nothing else was different. Nothing was out of place. Good.

Carefully, Mana made her way through the forest to the hill. She walked around the base of it slowly, taking her time and keeping an eye out for people. While she couldn't really sense people like Kaede could, she could sense demons, and Setsuna seemed to be far away. Also, her conventional senses were very finely honed, and her eyesight second to none. Very little would get past her.

It took two hours to get around the base of the hill, but once back at her starting location, having found nothing to suggest people had gone up the hill since she was last here, Mana began climbing up the ravine, using an overhang of rock that ran to the top to climb. Again, she found no scuffles on the rock, no footprints in the dust to suggest anyone had climbed this route either.

At the top, she gathered her materials quickly and efficiently. She had missed the first moves that she was wanting to catch, but she could hear a murmur above the canopy below that suggested no one was concerned. No panicked footfalls, no screech of birds telling that someone had rushed into an area. The crickets continued to chirp across the island in the warming spring weather.

Everything seemed quiet, idyllic.

Then a girl in a short grey skirt and ankle-high boots skipped merrily past the brow of the hill.

Mana blinked at the girl's skip took her three hundred metres from where she had left the canopy one hundred and forty metres below to where she had passed Mana's line of sight and then disappeared back down into the canopy.

She was struck dumb by the sight. _Magical girl? Here?_ Mana thought bewilderingly. _Why would one be here of all places? All that trying to rescue anyone will do is... kill us all._ That realisation, almost rational to others, snapped the professional outlook down again over Mana's mind. No, she had to survive. It was her duty and her right, as the only person playing this game properly, to survive. To survive meant killing the others. She could do that, easily.

If there was a magical girl on the island, then she was a threat to Mana's survival, and threats to her survival had to be eliminated. _But how do you kill a magical girl?_

* * *

After morning training, while the other senshi had gone to catch up on the evening's happenings in Battle Royale, Usagi went to bed and crashed. She'd spent the night having nightmares about Hina Ichigo trying to drown her that were so bad, they shook her awake every time her eyes closed in slumber. She'd tried calling Mamoru while on her bed, but hadn't been able to get through. Eventually, she dozed off on top of her bed, into a restless sleep.

She didn't see the suitcase on the floor open, and two mismatched eyes stare out at her. Nor, sadly, did she hear what by now was a very familiar rising whistle of something dropping towards her room from outside.

* * *

Usagi was in a place she didn't know. There was a lush carpet of grass beneath the soles of her slip-on tennis shoes, and numerous tree trunks around her. Above her, the sky darkened from the thick canopy of leaves. Some smaller shrubs dotted the landscape, mostly clustered in around the tree trunks.

With nothing to guide her, Usagi began walking calmly in a random direction. Every so often, she changed her path, trying to find something different, but it was all so much the same. It was strange, though. Usagi was sure she'd read that under thick canopies, forests were cooler than being out in the direct sunlight, yet it was fairly warm in this forest. Warm, familiar warmth.

It was strange, Usagi reflected as she examined a leaf on a growing tree. The warmth was familiar and she felt it should mean something to her. But then, also, the leaf felt the same way. It was bifurcated down the middle of the leaf at the end furthest from the stem, both points rolling off in spirals. Flecks of pink broke up the green in a pleasant manner.

It felt like it all should mean something, something profound, but Usagi didn't know.

It was peaceful, too. Very peaceful. Bliss. This had to be, she decided in her heart, what Crystal Tokyo would feel like. _But, you know, with less trees and more crystal._ She snorted a laugh.

In this world, it sounded unreal, echoing away. It made Usagi realise there was nothing around. No birds sang, no insects chirped, no wind stirred the leaves or grass, and yet again, it was just incredibly peaceful. Rather than disturbing, it felt right.

Usagi left the leaf and moved onwards deeper into the forest.

Eventually, she did hear something.

A pleasant humming, it sounded familiar, like everything in this world. Something classical. _Ami would have known_, Usagi thought placidly. She rounded a tree, and stopped dead.

This small clearing was the first sign of dead vegetation she'd seen anywhere in the forest. There hadn't been so much as a fallen leaf, but now there was browned grass and shrivelled shrubs. Some of the trees bordering the small clearing were starting to warp around, their branches twisting into gnarled shapes and roots starting to grow spiked protrusions.

In the middle of this, two dolls stood.

Suiseiseki, with her long brown hair and green dress, shook her head. "I'm amazed this forest is still alive, yes? This much corruption and it hadn't yet moved outside the clearing, yes?"

"Yeah," the other doll replied. She was dressed in blue shorts and jacket, and had a large pair of scissors resting across a shoulder, while Suiseiseki carefully held a large watering can. "The forest is doing its best to fight back. There's some real power in there that's kinda scary."

"Suiseiseki knows that too, yes. The forest needs some tender, loving care, yes." She hefted her watering can, then hit a stumpy shrub with it.

"Suiseiseki!" the doll in blue cried in alarm. "What are you doing? You know you shouldn't use your watering can for that!"

Suiseiseki looked back with a politely blank expression on her face.

"We use my dream scissors instead!" The doll lowered the scissors and snipped at the shrub. Usagi watched while they struggled. The shrub was very strong, though, even as warped and blackened as it was. Neither doll had much success, and eventually they gave up.

"What are you trying to do?" Usagi asked, curious from outside the clearing where she still stood beside her tree.

Suiseiseki jumped and spun around. "You startled me, yes!"

"I'm sorry."

The blue doll shifted the scissors back into her shoulder and regarded Usagi thoughtfully. "You shouldn't be able to be here. Shouldn't be able to see us."

"Oh Souseiseki, this is Usagi, Shinku's new game."

"She thinks of me as a game?"

"... yes," Souseiseki replied. "I'm sure she does. You're the game now of all the Rozen Maidens."

"Oh. So where are we?"

"We are in the world of dreams, yes? Little Ichi can't do bad things in here, yes?"

"This world is one all humans connect to in their sleep," Souseiseki answered, shooting Suiseiseki a glare. "My sisters and I have the ability to move about amongst this world and navigate into the dreams of individuals. Once there, we can influence the dream, make them... stronger in the real world."

"Better game, yes?"

Usagi considered for a few moments, a hand on her chin while she thought. She stared upwards at the canopy overhead, hearing it whisper as if in a breeze even though it remained motionless. "This is my dream world?" she asked.

"Yes," Souseiseki replied, shooting another glance at Suiseiseki. "This world represents your hopes and dreams and fears and aspirations."

"So why is this area dead? Did you kill it?"

Suiseiseki hefted her watering can. "Does it look like I can dry things up and make them wither with this, yes?"

"Well, maybe not you, but this one has scissors." Behind Usagi, the forest stirred, small shrubs starting to react and move. Vines began unfurling behind Usagi and creeping forward. Usagi remained unaware of this as it continued.

Souseiseki brandished her scissors. "These cut off... bad pieces of shrubs and trees and can mow a mean lawn, but they don't make things wither, either." She caught sight of the foliage moving behind Usagi, and gave the other doll a nudge.

"This area of your dream world was already corrupted. We were... trying to stop it spreading, yes." _Well, it was true_, Suiseiseki reflected, _stopping it spreading by taking the whole dream world out._ She also noticed the plant life springing around them and creeping forward. It meant Usagi was waking up in the real world, and her subconscious brain was now recognising intruders through its artificial terror boundary. They didn't have long. "We have to go, yes," she added.

As she turned to go, she thumped a green shrub, while Souseiseki snipped at a passing branch. Then, they tumbled back to the real world.

* * *

Once there, she found Hotaru shaking her shoulders, and the two dolls sitting next to the other woman. "Thank god," Hotaru whispered. "You stopped breathing for a moment. How do you feel?"

Usagi sat up with a hand to her head. "I think I've forgotten algebra."

"If that's all, there's no brain damage."

"Oh ha ha, very funny," Usagi muttered. "I'm serious. And what are you two doing up here? Go on, scram!" Suiseiseki and Souseiseki bolted from the bed. "Wait. Who are you?"

The blue-suited doll made to reply, but Suiseiseki stepped in front of her. "She's my sister, yes? We're twins, can't you tell?"

Looking at them, Usagi had to admit they looked similar – their heterochromatic eyes were reversed, their clothes different, and Suiseiseki's hair was longer, but those were the major differences. Even though mismatched, their eyes were the same shades. "Oh, yeah, I can tell. Now go on, scram!"

Hotaru waited until the dolls were gone before standing and going to the door.

"You want to talk, Hotaru?" Usagi asked softly from behind her. Hotaru hesitated in the doorway, before nodding and sliding the door shut.

"I do, yes. I mean yeah." She shook her head at unconsciously mimicking the doll's speech and moved back to the bed, while Usagi drew her knees up to her chest to allow Hotaru room to sit down. The younger senshi sat in the offered space, but remained silent for a while more as she thought. Eventually, she sighed. "Ranma hasn't contacted us at all."

"Did you think he would?"

"I know everyone thinks she's gone to the other side, but he hasn't, not really. He's doing something. He's seen something, and where he is, is where he has to be to avoid this, or fix it before it becomes a problem. I keep thinking back to that... episode... he had in the System. Or that Kaname had, rather. Remember, she started prophesising events to come after that training session?"

"I remember," Usagi replied.

"What did she say? What was it that was coming through from then? Ranma had touched something, he was stuck in the innards of the System, only briefly being able to escape into the digital world we were all trapped in. It had to be him speaking through Kaname. He had to have seen something." Hotaru shook her head. "What did he say?"

"Have a bath," Usagi suggested. "Let your cares and worries seep away into the heat. Let your mind wander, and see what comes of it. And let me come with you."

"Why?"

"Because I have this horrible suspicion those dolls are trying to kill me."

* * *

Negi awoke from a fevered dream, where Evangeline was chewing noisily on his neck. This was causing him a lot of problems, because he was trying to fly, to round up his students, and rescue them before the bombs around their necks went off and killed them, but Evangeline was slowing him down and doing something with her fingers that didn't feel right.

She was drawing complex magical circles on his chest.

He startled awake, to find Chamo curled up on one side, and a doll clutching a wicked-looking knife curled up beside him on the other. "Wahhh!" he yelped, sitting bolt upright.

A production member looked over at him, headset hanging around his neck as he sipped coffee from a cardboard cup. "That is your doll, isn't it? We found it this morning near your luggage and old man Nitta said he thought it was yours." The technician gave a small shudder. "Kids these days and their toys... when I was your age, our toys didn't have knives."

_Neither do mine,_ thought Negi, before realising he hadn't brought any actual toys with him, and this definitely wasn't something he had picked up in Kyoto, unless he'd somehow gotten really drunk and couldn't remember.

He took a closer look at the doll as Chamo popped up over his shoulder, peering at the new arrival. "Hmm..."

"You think you know where it came from, Chamo?" Negi whispered.

"I don't know for sure, but who do we know who likes playing with dolls?" came the sharp reply. Negi winced. It was a stupid question. As he watched, the doll slowly folded it's brow over one button eye: startled, Negi realised it was winking at him.

"Got it in one!" the doll said back.

The technician looked over, startled at the new voice from Negi's direction. Negi clapped his hand over the doll's mouth as it tried speaking again, and gave a weak laugh. "Toys these days."

"Yeah, toys these days," the technician echoed before moving away, disturbed. The voice had sounded too adult for the kid and didn't sound like any doll he'd ever heard before. More... evil, somehow.

Once the technician was out of earshot, Negi removed his hand and whispered, "Is Evangeline back on the island?"

"Yeah, she is, and she co-opted me to help you."

"Co-opted?"

"Never mind at this point. Stupid thing to say. She _enlisted_ my help."

"Are you a Chachamaru?"

The doll gave him a hard look. "I'm not some wind up dolly. But I don't believe in giving out my real name, so if you _must_ call me something, call my Boogie."

"Nice to meet you, Mr Boogie," Negi said, also reacting to the adult-sounding voice.

"Gah," Boogie sighed exasperatedly. "Enough of the mister. Just Boogie. Because that's all I am. A boogie."

"A boogie monster?"

"Exactly, kid. The kind of thing the dark has nightmares about. Forget the Vashda Narada, I'm what you don't want to find in the dark."

Negi shivered, but kept the excited smile on his face children have when being terrified by a movie they're enjoying.

"Now, Eva, she sent me in here to help you. Said you're taking too damned long and you've lost your... wand." Boogie eyed Negi's pants critically. "At your age, I don't think you'd have much of a wand, but hey, whatever floats the kid's boat."

"I think she means my magic wand."

"Yeah yeah yeah you can do a lot of magic with it, and you're magical to her. Now –"

"No, it really is a magic wand. I'm a mage."

"Kids still play Lodoss?"

"No, a _real_ mage. Chamo, tell him."

"Oh sure," Chamo interjected, "he's going to believe a talking ermine if he won't believe the ten year old genius teacher."

"A talking animal, huh?" Boogie looked impressed. "So I am dealing with a real live magical boy. Pretty cool. Well, that makes more sense than what she was saying to me, then."

"What was she saying to you?" Negi asked, curious.

"Well, she was suggesting I give you my wand, which I told her wasn't going to happen at all. But I _do_ have something that might be used as a magic wand... with a bit of work." Boogie reversed his knife, and without hesitation jammed it into his crotch before drawing it upwards, splitting his fabric body while showing no signs of pain. Once he had a big enough hole, he reached inside, grasses spilling out as he fumbled for something before withdrawing his hand clutching a piece of wood. He handed the wood to a surprised Negi. 

Boogie gave it a critical appraisal. "It needs some work. Promise not to blunt it and you can use my knife. I like watching people cut things almost as much as I like cutting them myself."

"Uh... okay," Negi replied, taking the knife in his other hand. Something about the wood was calling to him, asking him to shape it in a particular way. Slowly, with a careful hand and Boogie's watchful eye, Negi began to whittle.

Nearby, the technician glanced over again, and saw Negi whittling a piece of wood. He shuddered at the gutted doll sitting casually next to him, but was confused why Negi's shadow on the wall behind him was joined with the shadow of a taller, more twisted man. He glanced down at the doll again, just as its head turned around to face him. Something in the measured gaze from the doll unnerved the technician, and he scurried off to find work to do on the other side of the classroom.

* * *

"Most of us," Makoto explained to Setsuna a thousand years hence, as they walked down a rocky corridor. Makoto had explained they were heading to the dig site that had uncovered Moon Kingdom relics, but had long-since left the base proper. "Learned to change without our wands during the war. It became something important to do, we simply had to be able to do it to survive. They developed weapons that could break our wands and Luna couldn't bring that many through, and ours didn't rebuild like Ranma's had... or rather, they didn't in the time we had. It was just something we had to do, so we did it. Try it."

Setsuna considered, but felt nothing within her she'd recognise as a transformation unlock phrase or action. "I don't think it would work with me," she said hesitantly. "I don't feel anything at all."

Makoto frowned and glanced around. "We're deep enough now for their sensors not to pick us up if we do transform." She raised her hand. "I'll give you a demonstration. Jupiter planet power – make up!" As she spoke aloud, she clenched her fingers and Setsuna watched space tear and liquefy, Makoto's form being coated in the stuff of space. As it dropped and ran over her, it shifted her out of phase with reality and replaced her with her senshi-self. "That... makes it look easy, but it can be done with a little effort. You may not know this, but our other selves – our senshi souls – are basically another dimension overlaid through us. Kind of like a parasite, I guess, but one that can breach the walls of our universe and interact with people here. Usually, all we see of it is the costume, the powers, the occasional thoughts and knowledge, but they're almost as fully here as us... just displaced. Those souls... are all that's left of the original Moon Kingdoms now... with the humans of Earth as the original inhabitants."

"But the Kingdoms predate humanity."

"They predate modern humanity, but humanity has been around in one form or another for anywhere up to fifteen million years. Going by the writings down these tunnels, we place the creation of the Kingdoms around half of that ago, with the final death as man gathered into larger tribes and began its development about a million years ago. Around the time Queen Serenity decided to wipe out the Dark Moon Kingdom. At that time, the balance was disrupted completely and... well, we know what happened then."

Jupiter led the way into a cavern containing several tall monoliths, covered in writing and images in bas relief. "This, we think, was the final surviving holdout of the Martian populace. This tells the story of how the people were devastated by the attacks from the Dark Moon Kingdom, or Negative Universe as they tend to call them. The senshi were then collected, which can be seen here –" Jupiter pointed at an image showing ten balls circling away from the Moon towards what looked to be Earth. The next image showed hundreds of smaller balls doing the same. "- and these were the minor senshi, having been collected next by either Queen Serenity or the other people of the solar system. They were also seeded to Earth."

"Fascinating, but this doesn't help me in the slightest."

"No, but this image might." Jupiter moved on to the last of the images, which showed a large doorway. Setsuna revised her opinion of the doorway when she saw a person next to it, a very tiny stick figure carved into the rock. The doorway also held the symbol for her planet's namesake, Pluto. "We think it's a secondary time gate, shifted here sometime before the fall of the original Kingdom. In six days, it's exactly one thousand years since Usagi's point of no return. What we pin-pointed as it anyway. An assassination attempt..." Jupiter's voice trailed off as she remembered, but she shook it off. "It's important that someone stop it from taking place. Usagi came out of that even more convinced she was going to be doing the right thing. Wipe out Yoshihiro, wipe his forces and his world out, then bring Crystal Tokyo to life right then and there."

"This isn't how the future is supposed to be," Setsuna said, quietly. "It's supposed to be quiet, yes, but more because people aren't yelling at one another, and people are satisfied with their lives and the lives of others. They have their love and their passion, but no one wants for anything, so they extend themselves internally, strive for better. They create the future, not us. We just lead the way, give them that option."

"That's just it. That's what Ranma was trying to say all those years ago, but we didn't believe him at the time, and Usagi wouldn't listen by that point. We need someone to go back and help them. Sailor Shiva is about to rise, and then Demeter, Ganymede and Io... the pace will increase and the future will become this one again."

"Then where is this time gate? If I can activate it..."

"We have found it," Jupiter began dubiously, "but it's still buried. I've got Zentraedi digging it out as fast as we can, but it's going to take some time. Until then, I think I should show you everything that had happened, so if we can get you back, you're forearmed with knowledge on how to stop it."

_

* * *

_

Usagi was right

, Hotaru reflected, _this is great._ She lay, stretched out in the springs, feeling her cares wash away. Usagi sat next to her, keeping a hand on her arm so Hotaru didn't float off and bang her head. _Everything is so... so... I remember._

"The future will bring trouble, hardship, doubt and redemption. It will bring pain and death, destruction and enlightenment. A false idol will rise, and I will not be beside you during this time. It is a test you must face yourselves. And then, in the end, faith and hope will triumph, with the bitter tears of an infant its chorus."

"What was that?" Usagi asked when Hotaru fell silent. Then, without prompting, "What Kaname had said."

Hotaru nodded. "It seems to be coming true. All of it."

"We can't trust that Ranma's is the redemption she was referring to. But the baby?" Usagi shook her head. "I don't know any babies."

"I think... I think he may have been referring to Yoshihiro. Remember, he used to be much smaller? Like a tar baby." Hotaru considered. "But... I need to know more. I need to know... I..." She fell silent, listening to a voice from deep within. "I might know a way," she finished, finally. "I might know a way to find out what's going on in Ranma's mind."

Hotaru stood up from the spring, gathered her towel, and walked out, leaving Usagi alone in the bathing area.

Well, alone apart from the two dolls grinning evilly behind her.

TO BE CONTINUED..

SAILOR MOON SAYS:

Right! Getting closer to the business end of this part of the arc, ever more slowly. Not so much of a note this time, but more an amusement. Australia has an Olympian called Miao Miao, sounding like the noise a cat makes. I have to say, coolest name ever. Next time: Ranma's Fist of Doom!


	13. Chapter 13

**DISCLAIMER:** Relatively standard stuff. Existing characters are properties of the people who made them up. Mitsuki, and several other characters are mine, and so's the story, hence ownership and copyright of them belongs to me. Contact me at my usual email address if you want permission to use anything I've written for whatever purposes. As per usual, I'm having formatting ripped out on upload, and now having line breaks introduced for no apparent reason. I apologise in advance for any formatting errors you may meet.

**Justice**

By

Raymond Cooper

Strange Days, Stranger Nights

It was early afternoon, and Hotaru sat cross-legged on her bed with her eyes closed and her hands resting gently on her knees, palms up. She'd been like this for an hour now, but no luck. Whatever Saturn had told her, it didn't seem to be working. She wasn't getting any insights into Ranma's mind or progression of thoughts or his plans or anything. She made a disgusted sound in the back of her throat, but otherwise kept perfectly still aside from the steady rise and fall of her chest.

It was funny. Her senses had sharpened greatly as it was, and Hotaru could almost feel Saturn behind her, arms reached around the girl as she focussed. Almost. It was a very physical feeling, a definite presence. Additionally, she could feel the others in the house as well, Usagi in the baths still, Rei in her room, Ami watching the television for the latest updates on Battle Royale. While the senshi found it disgusting, they found themselves having to keep track of it, to assuage their own feelings of guilt at not being able to stop it.

But they couldn't. If they went in, they would make things worse. They were already hated and feared – people would use that appearance as an excuse to hate them even further and to blame them for the television show, or something equally as stupid.

Further afield, she could feel Minako, Makoto and Mitsuki outside, still training with Cologne. In fact, Cologne seemed to be giving Mitsuki some more personalised direction. Not surprising, really: Cologne had to recognise Mitsuki's internal problems and what that could mean to anyone around if she snapped. There was something about that girl... she could just about see it. As she focussed on Mitsuki, the single form she saw in her mind's eye split into over a dozen, and the unified voice that was her soul broke up into chaotic arguments and petty bickering, with one voiceless presence watching over all and one angry presence standing to the side with its back to the rest.

Metaphorically speaking.

But no, none of this was related to Ranma, and she pulled back, giving Mitsuki her privacy. She cast her mind forth again, looking for Ranma, but unable to find him anywhere. This was growing frustrating. She could see a lot, but not what she needed to see.

What she didn't see, though, was something else in the room with her.

* * *

Setsuna snapped her fingers. No transformation. She twirled in the air like some American actress she'd seen once on television who transformed into a super woman, thankful she was alone in the sleeping quarters she'd been shown to. But that also failed. There was no voice, no presence in her head. It was very disconcerting not to feel that background buzz in the base of her skull that said Sailor Pluto was with her.

It was very unusual having to think about Pluto in this manner as well. To all intents and purposes, they were one person – Setsuna the outer face, Pluto the inner – she really wasn't used to thinking about them as separate entities, but she thought that was a better description of the two of them – two souls, entwined as one. Twisted around and throughout each other, and now it felt –

It didn't feel like they had been separated, just... blocked. If she wasn't a senshi in this time because of something that had happened in the past, as this wasn't Setsuna's actual future, she should still theoretically be able to access her powers, her other self. It was just a matter of being able to do so. This was going to be the hard part.

She focussed again, this time on the back of her hand, held before her, and let her subconscious mind slip beneath the surface looking for answers. Nothing floated back up to her conscious mind, though, and after a few minutes, she gave up.

A knock on her door made her give up any further attempts. Chao was there, looking expectant. "Want to go for a walk? Go see the dig site?"

"Sure, why not?" Setsuna replied, grabbing a jacket as she left. Sayo drifted in behind them as they walked down the corridor, wafting one way and then the other. They found an airlock, and Chao broke out oxygen bottles and facemasks for the pair from a cabinet within the lock. "I thought the dig site was inside, down in the lower caverns Makoto was talking about."

"We found the gate through there, yes, but the cavern leading to it is unstable. We can't get a full-size Zentraedi in there to dig, and we don't have a lot of large-scale portable digging machinery." Chao shrugged. "Most of what we have is eight hundred or more years old, remember, so a lot of the larger stuff has just plain oxidized beyond use." She handed Setsuna a mask and bottle, and helped her fit the mask to her face a moment later after affixing her own. "And really, we're all here doing very little."

"I thought Makoto would have been able to blast the gate out much faster. It should be able to withstand anything a senshi can throw at it. I'm still not sure what's happened to the Pluto gate; things got... hectic."

Chao toggled on radio switches and set the airlock's cycle into action. Oxygen hissed out of the room, but the pressure didn't go down very much at all. At Setsuna's questioning glance, Chao offered, "UAC and a number of other organisations were in the process of terraforming Mars back when this was a populated base. They got the pressure of the atmosphere up, but not a lot else done. Oh, the oxygen content of the air has gone up considerably, but carbon dioxide is still the primary component. There's some seeded areas of grasses and mosses that is slowly changing that, but at the moment we're looking at another thousand years easily before the air anywhere on Mars is the slightest bit breathable without a mask." She gestured Setsuna to proceed before her, Sayo drifting out next and Chao bringing up the rear, keying the airlock's door to close behind them.

They walked for thirty minutes, climbing out of the small crater the airlock was in, then across a kilometre of rocky, dusty plains. At the amount of dust the women kicked up as they walked, Chao said, "We had the seasonal dust storms subside about two months ago. We haven't really done a whole lot outside since then, so the dust has remained settled here at the moment."

"You still didn't answer my question," Setsuna reminder Chao. Chao looked suitably abashed.

"It wasn't intentional. I thought you were querying the air pressure. Sorry. No, any senshi throwing their power around here would instantly attract Evangelions, Gundams, anything Earth and her colonies and her allies can throw at Mars." Chao shrugged. "They may even decide the system can do with only seven planets and chuck something this way that could shatter the planet into dust, but they like making sure senshi are dead, so I would think they'd bring in ground forces and do that, at least at first. Afterwards, who knows? Ah, here we are." The trio crested another crater, and Setsuna saw it wasn't exactly a crater. It was a pit, dug by Zentraedi, eight of whom were digging even now with huge rusted mining scoops in their hands dragged the dirt and rock out of the ground. They lifted the scoops, similar in relative size to a large bucket in Setsuna's hands, out of the pit and dumped the tailings, then spread it around with a rake or their feet or the scoop – anything to not leave a noticeable pile of dirt where it could be recorded.

Standing just below the lip of the pit stood two girls in white jumpsuits, coloured skirting sewn around the waist of each as if it was merely a reminder of who they were for others more than aesthetic value. Setsuna pointed them out to Chao, who looked a little cagey and led Setsuna away from them. "They're two of the minor senshi. And it's probably best you don't know their names. If you're going back in time, your first meeting would be some time in your future."

"Maybe it should be, but if I'm going back in time to stop something from happening, I need to know the details. I need the specifics. I can't just blindly waltz in and throw my weight around. It won't work like that!"

Chao held up a hand. "Let me check." She keyed off the comms, and turned her back on Setsuna so the older woman couldn't lip read. She spoke for a few minutes, then turned back, keying the comms back on. "Makoto says it's okay. But no names. Planetary bodies only. They know you and you'll maybe remember their faces, but I don't want to be responsible for completely destroying the fabric of spacetime. Agreed?"

"Agreed," Setsuna nodded, and Chao led the way back to the two minor senshi. They had been staring after Setsuna as they had walked away, and were still curious as she returned.

"Sailor Pluto," one said, the taller of the two. There was something familiar about her appearance, and she seemed as if she wanted to say something, but she held herself back admirably. Instead, she tried to keep her voice level. "Makoto's already spoken of you to us. I'm Sailor Charon."

The other woman nodded. "Sailor Dione."

"I'm... I guess you know if Makoto has talked to you. What I'm looking for is information on what you remember of those days."

Charon looked uncomfortable and looked to Dione. "You'll have to tell her."

"Why not you?" Setsuna asked.

"I can't say," the taller girl replied, a pained expression on her face. "It's personal."

"Oh. Then... Sailor Dione? Can you tell me anything?"

"I came along a year later, after the war had started. But being there early, I was able to see a lot of the things that had happened, because I lived through the first days, and what came before." She glanced down at the Zentraedi for a few moments before continuing. Charon turned back to look at them, but kept glancing back at Setsuna from time to time as if to make sure she was still there. "The thing that kicked it all off was a race of giant robots that began attacking the world. Mostly, it was centred in Japan, Tokyo specifically, but a playboy billionaire who'd tried rebuilding Tokyo a few months earlier after it had vanished in a giant monster attack funded a secretive group of rescue vehicles, which were able to take down these giant robots." Dione paused. "Or so we thought. In reality, it was a Dark Kingdom trap. They were using the cheers and well-wishes of people to power up devices to unseal the Dark Kingdom and overwrite Earth with its information."

"That would have done the same thing had we managed to recreate the Moon Kingdom – it would have destroyed the planet," Setsuna interrupted.

"Yes, it would have. I found this out later, you understand." Dione continued. "Still, the senshi were booed out of society – them and other magical people. After the troubles Tokyo had gone through, and by extension all of Japan, people displaying magical aptitude were shunned. It then swung the other way sometime after Battle Royale, but that's another story – but where it all went wrong. That's where Sailor Shiva, second of the minor senshi, came from. She wasn't right. She was hard to control and unbalanced. The others started coming out then as well, like someone had thrown a switch. We started springing from everywhere. Magical girls, not necessarily the standard kind already established, but people who had the potential within their souls, these people the world over started awakening as senshi and then Yoshihiro struck openly, all pretence at civility gone. The senshi stopped him, and then Sailor Moon made her choice. But it was a choice that had been set some time earlier. She had been wanting to do this for a long time. She had been working for it for a long time by then. It was just... it just seemed time for her. Inner Tokyo was in ruins, the people seemed lost, she thought it made sense. And the other senshi, at first they felt it was right. Makoto will tell you they argued against her plans, but the reality was they didn't start saying no until some months after Sailor Moon had created Crystal Tokyo."

"They didn't..."

"They didn't question her until after the first wave of attacks, when Serenity stopped machinery everywhere and killed a lot of innocent people. But even then, it wasn't very hard questioning. They were all convinced they were doing right, doing the right thing. I think they very much wanted to believe they were doing the right thing. The minor senshi all thought this was how things were supposed to go, that they weren't supposed to question their Queen even if they thought she was screwing things up badly."

"I've read I was missing from this war," Setsuna said, when Dione fell silent again. Dione shot a glance at Charon, who turned back to face Setsuna, looking embarrassed.

"You survived the war," Charon said, fidgeting. "But you didn't fight in it. When it all fell apart... you hid."

"Hid?"

"Trying to save the future through any means necessary. Getting ready for another go at it."

"So I'm still alive, also?"

Charon gave Dione a pained looked, but the shorter woman didn't say anything, just looked back down into the pit. "I can't say."

"You started this," Chao prompted from behind. "UAC was your brainchild. You knew there was old Moon Kingdom technology out here. Over a decade after the war, you gathered the resources to push for corporate exploitation of Mars. When the Zentraedi arrived, it was UAC troops who met them with the UN space forces and fought them to a standstill while we got sung at. Apparently, at the time, it was a very unusual way to fight, the Generals were intrigued, the fighting stopped and then... well, Zentraedi ships were assigned to UAC for the human colonisation project. Fold drives were ripped apart and rebuilt, UAC was in the forefront of development of the colony ships that launched out into space to spread humanity, but you had your sights set on Mars. Pushed for this base. Armed and trained UAC marines to handle Dark Kingdom attacks. And then..." Chao looked at Charon again, who wouldn't met either her or Setsuna's gaze. The taller woman turned back to the pit and squared her shoulders up, now pointedly ignoring everything going on behind them.

Aware now she wasn't going to get anything else from the two, Setsuna turned to Chao. "How long until you reach the gate?"

"Ahh, hard to say. The gate is down five hundred metres. We've only dug one hundred and fifty metres. We'll do it in time." Chao gave another look as a Meltrandi lifted a scoop out of the hole and dumped it for spreading around the top. "But maybe not have much time left. Main event is in six days, a thousand years ago."

"With the gate, I could go anywhere in space and time..."

"With the main gate, yes. But this gate, according to our research, is limited to jumps of a thousand years exactly. I think it was the prototype for the main gate on Pluto. Still is a lot left unknown. This is the problem we have. Could be destination-locked also. We just won't know until we fire it up. But firing up the gate will also attract a lot of attention back on Earth. It will be a lot of trouble."

"Trouble," agreed Sayo from behind.

"So, I just have to get to Earth, at the right time, stop Sailor Shiva from awakening, and then I should be able to save Usagi from an assassination attempt and then from making her decision a hundred years too early?"

"That's right," Chao replied soberly. Then she broke out in a cheeky grin. "Isn't it fun knowing the future?"

"That's if things don't change again," Setsuna replied, a little sombre in her mood.

"Well, that's true," Chao said after a few moments hesitation.

As they turned to return to the base, Setsuna caught Charon's eye. It was a weird look, compassionate. But if the girl didn't want to talk with her, she didn't have to.

* * *

Back at the base, watching in the midst of a holographic feed, Makoto caught the subtle interplay between Setsuna and Charon. As she suspected, Charon had recognised her mother straight off, and as expected, she had been unable to talk to her.

The falling out they'd had after the war as Setsuna had tried to keep her daughter safe had been tremendous. The fact that Setsuna had died a few decades later, her ambitions left unfulfilled and in the hands of her daughter, still rankled Charon, but she still wanted her mother's acceptance. After everything that had happened, she still wanted to be told her mother respected the choices she'd made.

It looked like they never would get that choice, because as long as Charon was hesitant about telling her mother who she was, they would never be able to reconcile.

Beside her, Nemesis stirred, glancing back at the pit. "We're behind on schedule. If only we could transform on the surface and help out..."

"You know we can't do that."

"You're still lying to her."

"I spent five hundred years in a magical prison. As far as the human race knows, I'm still in that prison, never to be released, even if the Mages think I can do something to save this world." Makoto turned away from Nemesis. "I'm not going to jeopardise that by telling Setsuna things she doesn't need to know. This Setsuna hasn't lived through the war, hasn't had to use her will to shift the world to get what she wants. She wants the restoration of Crystal Tokyo. But which one? One where we're all ascendant? One where we're all in control of the world? One where we're a life support centre for the world? Or perhaps the only whole people left in the world, a race of beautiful people hermetically sealed away from a dying world?" Makoto made a disgusted sound in the back of her throat and shut down the holoprojector. "Because the reality is, for humans, this world is pretty good. No extremes of emotion, no passion, no fire, but there's no war either, no poverty, no hunger. Without the need to wipe each other out, humanity is doing well."

"Spreading like a virus," Nemesis returned. "In the last thousand years, we've covered ten percent of the galaxy, splitting and jumping. Last year, we detected the first returns from the colonial expedition to Kobol, on the other side of the galaxy. We're encroaching on other races who aren't necessarily happy about what we're doing. Heck, I've been picking up rumours in The World that the Juraians are considering censoring us over actions of GOTT out their way, claiming they're not under Earth jurisdiction."

"That's humanity, not us. And we have to have a better way," Makoto reminded the other woman. "We just can't blindly send her back and hope she does exactly the right thing. For all we know, that's what we did and what she did and things still turned out this way." Makoto shook her head. 

"No. We have to make contingency plans. If Setsuna is able to go back, we need to send someone with her. Someone she's going to be able to trust and someone who's not there already so they don't get distracted from the task at hand."

"You still don't have to lie to her, not about us," Nemesis tried again. "You told her you hadn't seen another major senshi in a millennium, but also told her you had three here already."

"I corrected myself to three in total. I don't think she noticed."

"She's a smart woman, from what I remember. She helped Shiva and I escape, managed to hide us until a way was found to hide us from the forced recognition spell as well. I think she'll have picked up on that slip of the tongue. You know Hotaru would want to see her as well."

Makoto glanced towards a heavy bulkhead door. "You're just saying that. I don't think she would recognise anything at the moment."

"No, no maybe not," Nemesis admitted. "But maybe you've got to trust her. At least with a little bit more than you've given her."

_

* * *

_

Contact has been made.

The emotionless message echoed through Sailor Ceres's head and woke her from a mid-afternoon slumber. Not having to move like the others did meant Ceres could nap when she wanted to, and years of living with her father's idea of surprise tests meant she was a very light sleeper. Usually, they involved icy water, cats, rocks, or some combination of the above.

The icy water and cats method was Genma's personal favourite, especially after smearing the sleeping Ranma in fish paste.

She looked around, but couldn't find what had made the sound. It was something nearby, or... maybe she was hearing things. Or... maybe it was in her head in other ways. Wouldn't be the first time she'd heard voices.

Her eyes felt gummy with sleep, so Ceres wiped them with her hand.

Except her hand didn't normally feel like that, didn't normally squeak when she rubbed it into the corner of her eyes, didn't normally also let out a squeal a few moments later. Ceres opened her eyes and looked at her right hand.

Which was no longer there. Instead, there was a small girl, attached to her wrist as if her wrist was the girl's waist. She was also naked from the 'waist' up, but covering herself and bright red in the face. She looked familiar. Ceres peered closer.

"Hotaru?"

The girl on Ceres's hand eeped at the giant blue eyes blinking at her, and dove for cover, taking Ceres's arm with her and wrenching it badly up behind Ceres's back. "Ranma?" came Hotaru's voice a few moments later, trembling from behind. Ceres brought her arm back to the front of her; Hotaru had grabbed some leaves from the ground in the few seconds that she was gone from sight and had used them to fashion a brief top. Her now-free hands were covering her eyes, behind which she peeked out at Ceres. "Ranma?" she repeated.

"Sailor Ceres, thank you. Less people here who know my real name, the better. It'll stop a lot of needless death." Ceres looked a little dumbfounded. "But what are you doing on my arm?"

Hotaru looked down and make another squeal. "I thought you were a giant!"

"A giant? Why would you..." Ceres registered the small size of the girl on her wrist and nodded. "Oh, a giant. No, you're a little girl, stuck on my arm. What are you doing?"

Hotaru blushed and looked away. "I'm naked, you know."

"Oh wow, I really didn't notice, and if you didn't notice, I've had a pair of those for a couple of years now myself." With her left hand, Ceres demonstrated before freezing with one hand groping herself.

"Ran... Sailor Ceres?" Hotaru squeaked.

"I... I'm seeing things. It's finally happened. I've lost my mind!" Ceres's eyes grew wide and her pupils shrank, her mouth breaking out into an insane grin while she giggled. "I knew this day would come, what with everythin' in my life an' all. I'm now seeing my girlfriend stuck on the end of my –"

"Ranma!" Hotaru slapped his face with her small hand. It barely registered as a slap, but it brought Ceres up short. "Snap out of it! I'm real! I'm..." Hotaru looked down. "Why am I attached to your arm?" The situation just registered with her as well and she began to panic. Ceres took a deep breath, and then grabbed Hotaru's head with her forefinger and thumb holding Hotaru by her cheeks. The smaller senshi stopped dead. "I think something went wrong. This was supposed to let me see your thoughts."

"My thoughts?"

"No-not like that!" Hotaru quickly interjected, waving her hands wildly in front of her in a negative gesture. "I mean, know what you're planning. Why you left us and all."

"Ahh." Ceres scratched the back of her head, thoughtfully. "Why'd ya want to know?"

"It's good to see you. Even if you do have bigger..." Hotaru glanced down at her own less-than-ample chest, then looked away, dejected.

"You seem a lot more..."

"Chirpy?"

"I was going to say extreme than usual, but chirpy works, I guess." Ceres looked away again. "Why do you want to know what I'm planning?"

"That was you, a long time ago, right? Back in the mall? With that weird girl telling us you were going to kill us."

"Well... she was right."

Hotaru froze, and found Ceres wouldn't look her in the eye, instead deciding to look elsewhere in a moody pout. Every time Hotaru shifted position to stare into Ceres's eyes, Ceres was looking somewhere else already. "How could she be right? We're your _friends_."

"Friends don't try to blow up the world. Usagi's going to try. She doesn't know what she's starting."

"Usagi's a kind, pure person, and she would only do what she has to to bring love and peace to the world."

Ceres snorted. "You believe that as much as I do. Ya know, she's planning now on bringing everything to a screaming halt. I've seen the future. It's not pretty, but it's what's needed. Sailor Moon's time is in the future – not now. Far in the future. A hundred years from now. Not in the next couple'a months."

"I don't understand."

"I know you don't, and that's the problem."

"I'm willing to, though." Earnest eyes appeared in front of Ceres, Hotaru looking very determined indeed. "I trust you, you know. Trust you with my heart, my soul, and my life right now. I believe in you, but I need to know why you're doing this."

"C'mon, we'll go see what's going on around the island." Ceres stood up, dusting down her skirt where she'd been sitting on it. She looked critically at Hotaru on her right wrist, before sighing. "Can you at least transform?"

"Won't that bring down Yoshihiro or the other monsters under his command? Or is this game show something you're doing?"

"This isn't my doing!" Ceres shouted, suddenly angry. "This is _so_ not my doing! I am here, at great personal risk, and risk to the future, to try and stop it, put things right! It's a test for me, if anything. And I'm sure the monster who set this up, I'm sure she's looking hard for me in the real world."

"Isn't this –"

"This is a magical construct. A pocket dimension. The TV crew was brought here along with the class. This isn't the real world, and Umiko is searching for me hard out there, I'm sure. And she's looked through here as well and obviously hasn't found me, so I need to know: can you transform?"

Hotaru looked down, chastised at the sudden outburst and her lower lip trembled, but then she glared up forcefully, fists back away from her body. "Of course I can! Saturn planet power – make up!" She twirled a small transformation wand that Ceres hadn't seen appear, then a wash of purple ribbons descended on her wrist, and Hotaru was replaced by a small Sailor Saturn, looking all the more ridiculous for her small size and position mounted on Ceres's wrist.

Ceres couldn't help it. Her left hand covered her mouth as she started laughing out loud.

"Can you stop now?" Saturn squeaked from Ceres's wrist after a minute or so of laughter.

"Yeah, yeah, I think I can, I think." Ceres heaved herself back to her feet, and quickly dusted herself down with both hands, until an indignant, "Hey!" from Saturn made her raise her right hand again.

"Oh man, I didn't realise," Ceres said.

"Well, what did you think –"

"This is really gonna suck."

* * *

Asuna and Konoka stood together near the cave entrance as the sun began to drop. They had another border shift coming up soon, and everyone would have to move into another territory to stop the explosive collars from killing everyone. They had to move far enough as well that Big Man wouldn't decide the show was getting boring and kill someone at random, and yet not far enough that they could escape back to safety if it was required.

"It's a pretty evening, Asuna," Konoka smiled.

"You're an idiot," Asuna replied in disbelief. "We're stuck on an island, told to kill each other to survive, and we're likely about to start being killed off so this show can move on, and you're thinking about how nice the evening is?"

"I take what I can get."

Asuna looked over Konoka's head to where Setsuna stood. She noticed that the swordswoman had her scabbard pulled around to her front, her other hand gripping the hilt. "Something wrong?"

Then Asuna heard it, too. Or rather, didn't hear it: the forest had gone silent.

Chachamaru moved beside Asuna, eyes piercing the gloom, ears listening for any random sound. Behind them, her arms around her raised legs, Misa raised her head, and looked in a different direction. "Chizuru?"

Back where Asuna, Chachamaru and Setsuna were watching, something bounced out of the forest towards them. It rolled after two bounces, wet meaty sounds following it as it squelched to a stop at Chachamaru's feet. She bent down to pick it up, but then thought the better of it, instead holding her arms back to hold Asuna and Setsuna back from seeing what it was. A deft kick that also sounded suspiciously meaty sent the object rocketing back into the forest.

"What was it?" Asuna asked in a quiet voice.

"It was a person, or part of a person," Setsuna offered what little she had seen.

The gynoid stood up straight, looking into the trees now in the direction the object had come from. "It was Satsuki."

"That was too small to be... oh." Asuna's voice trailed off and got quiet as she realised what part of Satsuki it would have had to have been, and was suddenly glad she hadn't had to see it personally. "Mana's gone too far now. We have to -"

"It's not Mana," Chachamaru replied. Shapes moved in the trees, tall shadow-like shapes with white faces. "This is courtesy of Zazie Rainyday. The lateral scraping and angle of the entry wound suggest someone smaller than Mana. The miniature Menos out there confirm that suspicion."

"Menos?" Asuna asked, blankly.

"Hollows?" Setsuna asked, horrified.

"Zazie has been sighted with them several times at Mahora. The Master hasn't taken any action so far because they haven't threatened herself, or anyone else. Be careful of their mouths if they attack," Chachamaru added for Asuna's benefit.

"What's going on?" Sakurako asked from behind.

Asuna quickly whirled, grabbed the cheerleader and pushed her back to the inner group to stand with Ku Fei and the others. "Don't move from here. She may have said save the cheerleader, save the world, and she probably has rocks in her head, but in case there' something to it, you stay _here_. Where it's safe."

"Nowhere's safe," Misa moaned from the ground, burying her head again against her drawn-up knees. "She's so noisy."

"It's not Mana," Asuna told KU, giving Misa a confused look. "Chachamaru says it's Zazie. I don't know if it is, but keep on guard in case Mana or someone else tries to break through."

Ku nodded firmly. "Can count on Ku!"

Asuna nodded in response, and headed back to Chachamaru and Setsuna, who took the opportunity to herd Konoka back to the group behind them. "Anything coming closer?" she asked the gynoid.

Chachamaru nodded tersely. "I have been wound for the evening. If Zazie or Mana attack, I will be ready. To answer your question, the Menos are moving closer. I see or hear no sign of Zazie yet, but she is an accomplished acrobat and entertainer – it is possible i will not hear her."

"Kaede's not nearby, either. Damn. We're on our own."

"Maybe not," Setsuna added as she returned. "Remember... our friend? She said to yell. Really loudly."

"As if that'd work," Asuna groaned, pinching the bridge of her nose in frustration. "I mean, do you really think if I yell, like this," she raised her voice in example, "Help, help, we're being killed!" She dropped her voice down low again. "That she'll come rescue us?"

"Yo," someone said from behind Asuna. The student yelped, and jumped forward, spinning around bringing her harisen up in readiness.

Sailor Ceres stood there, saluting with her right hand – which seemed to be covered in a bandage. "You called?"

"Argh!"

"That means someone just got killed and we need help in Asuna-speak," Konoka added helpfully from the crowd behind the smaller group.

"Thank you, Konoka," Asuna threw back between gritted teeth. Konoka's cheerful smile did nothing to calm her.

"Well, it's good luck I was in the area, then," Ceres replied. She held her right hand up, instead of dropping it to her side like she did her left. Asuna eyed the bandaged hand a little warily.

"How did you injure your hand?"

"Oh, I'm not injured."

"Then what –"

"Oooh," Ceres muttered, holding her hand a little higher and looking at it. "I, uh, developed a powerful new magical attack. So powerful, I have to seal it in case it, uh, explodes an' stuff."

"Did you know your accent changes when you lie?" Konoka said from the side.

"I'm not lyin'!" Ceres threw back indignantly. "I'm tellin' the truth. This," she held her hand aloft, "is a powerful weapon. I call it..." Inspiration struck. "My Fist of Doom!"

"Please to meet you," Sailor Ceres's fist announced and bowed politely.

The only noise that broke the silence was the sound of the Menos approaching from the treeline. Chachamaru turned back to face them. "The Menos are approaching. Defensive positions. Watch for cero blasts."

"Cero?" Asuna asked.

"Destructive energy blasts from their mouths," Setsuna replied, drawing her katana from its shealth and holding it as a ready position. "Really destructive."

"Right. Ku! Take the others, move away from here. Get them... get them to our fallback position, okay?"

"It's all over," Misa moaned from the ground.

"Not over yet, come on!" Ku hauled the cheerleader to her feet and the two stumbled off with the others in tow. With the other girls leaving, the Menos began moving faster, and just inside the tree line, the remaining girls could make out a slight figure, human in appearance, step out from beside a tree.

"Zazie?" Asuna called. "Why are you doing this? You know we're all going to get off this island, right?" Zazie didn't reply, but began moving lightly towards the girls, her expressionless face giving no clue what was going to happen, but her attendant Menos starting to move faster and faster gave her intentions away.

Ceres looked at the retreating girls, then back to the approaching Hollow. They seemed to be keeping a set distance away. Seemed to be, anyway. When the Menos were fifteen metres away, Ceres stepped in front of the remaining girls and held a hand back to stop them from stepping forward. "I got this one. Just, if I do anything, make it look like you're responsible." She raised her voice. "You! Back off. I don't wanna hurt you, I don't wanna have to stop you. Back down now, and I promise you'll get off this island before I go. Keep coming and I gotta take a stand. Maybe hurt you. So back off now." Zazie continued moving forward, ignoring Ceres's request. "Well, I warned you. This better be good. Ready?" Ceres said to no one in particular as she lifted her bandaged hand up close to her face.

Before Zazie could do anything, Ceres dropped her arm to point at the approaching Menos and yelled, "SAILOR CERES FIST OF DOOOOOOM!"

Asuna, standing just behind Sailor Ceres, swore she could hear a little voice squeak, "Death rebord revolution!" in the silence after Ceres's words.

A blast of energy burst forth from Ceres's bandaged hand, the wave devouring everything in its path and splintering trees and shattering rock, making short work of the Hollows in front of it.

* * *

Back in the classroom, Negi looked around, startled, at the sight that was on the television screens now. Asuna was standing, stunned, with Chachamaru and Setsuna, as a wave of destruction spread out from them, towards Zazie and a group of tall, shadow-like ghosts with white faces and long, pointed noses. What was causing the destruction? Had Asuna managed to do something, like she'd done to Evangeline back at Mahora? Or was this something else? Negi didn't know, not yet.

In his hands, the wand lay unfinished. Only part of it had been whittled so far, and Boogie sat next to him, also watching the screens.

"I wonder if they have popcorn here?" the doll asked idly. "This looks like it could be good."

TO BE CONTINUED..

SAILOR MOON SAYS: another chapter! This was a lot of fun to write, this chapter. So, next chapter: Sailor Ceres takes on all-comers. The Negima girls go on the run. Obviously, more in the future. Lots of fun!


	14. Chapter 14

**DISCLAIMER:** Relatively standard stuff. Existing characters are properties of the people who made them up. Mitsuki, and several other characters are mine, and so's the story, hence ownership and copyright of them belongs to me. Contact me at my usual email address if you want permission to use anything I've written for whatever purposes. As per usual, I'm having formatting ripped out on upload, and now having line breaks introduced for no apparent reason. I apologise in advance for any formatting errors you may meet.

**Justice**

By

Raymond Cooper

Pretty Fist Of Fury

"SAILOR CERES FIST OF DOOOOOOM!"

An explosive wave erupted from Sailor Ceres' hand, propagating outwards rapidly towards the Menos and Zazie. The wave hit several Menos a moment before Asuna had a spot of inspiration, raised her hands and yelled, "HADOKEN!"

Konoka clapped politely from far behind, where she was helping Ku move Sakurako away from the growing fight. "That was only three seconds too late, Asuna."

"Shut up," Asuna growled back.

"You should all fear my demon right hand," Ceres continued, trying to talk the other Menos out of pressing their attack, but they moved ever closer. She held it up again. "It's a very powerful right hand! I wouldn't wanna mess with it!"

The Menos pressed closer, so Ceres let off another Fist of Dooooooom attack. Again, Asuna swore she heard a small voice squeak, "Death reborn revolution!" at the same time. She brought her hands up in the same instant and yelled, "Hadoken!" again. The wave expanded outwards again, ripping through trees and another two of the cloaked giants.

"What are these things?" Ceres yelled back at Setsuna and Chachamaru, who had recognised them moments earlier.

"A collection of spirits, bound tightly around a dominant core. Extremely powerful in their normal state. But these... seem to be midget Menos."

"Midget?" Ceres threw back to Setsuna.

"Mmm," Setsuna cut off with a quick nod. "They're generally much, much bigger. And they can't be reasoned with. They're not intelligent as you would recognise them."

"Oh, so we're all right, then." Ceres turned back to the advancing horde, now thinned out by Sailor Ceres' attacks. There were still a dozen to contend with, and Ceres could hear Hotaru panting from beneath the bandages covering her up. So, a third Fist of Doom attack was out of the question, at least for now. Hotaru seemed to sense her indecision in her hesitation, and gave a perky if breathless, "I can still do this!"

Ceres cradled her bandaged right hand with her left. "Nah, not yet. I've got other tricks up my sleeve." She raised her voice and directed it at Zazie again. "Now, you've seen what my right hand can do. But that's nothing compared to what I can do with my left."

There was no response from Zazie to that pronouncement, but Asuna felt it demanded one from somewhere. "Why? What can you do with your left?"

Ceres gave a cheeky grin back at Asuna, thankful someone asked. "I can _hit_ stuff!" Then, with a flounce of her skirt, she skipped into combat range of the Menos, picked one, and delivered a punch with all her power behind it. The force of the punch first rippled the Menos, then shattered it into fragments, each hissing and then disappearing from this world as they were pulled back to the plane they had come from. Another one lunged at her, skeletal arms emerging from its cloak, but she slipped through the grasping fingers with a tight pirouette, dropped low, then rolled back onto her shoulders before pushing off with her hands and delivering a double-spring kick to the Menos' midsection that punched clear through. For a moment, Ceres could see the trees on the other side of the spirit creature before it exploded. A third Menos went down to a surprisingly low-skilled uppercut that knocked the beast's white mask clean off.

By this time, Chachamaru and Setsuna were moving into combat range of a Menos they'd each picked out for themselves, and Asuna, in the background, held her hands out ready and yelled, "_Adeat!_" before also charging into combat, swinging her harisen left and right.

In almost no time, the Menos were no more.

"Give it up now, in the name of truth and love," Sailor Ceres said, striking a pose and pointing at Zazie, who by now had stopped her advance to watch the raging combat. "By all that is good in the world, you cannot be allowed to strike fear into the hearts of those trusted people you call friends. Give it up now!" Ceres considered throwing a "Vile villain!" into the works there, but it had been a while since she'd had to pose like this and thought that was too much more a parody than she was intending. The idea was to get the schoolkid to give up before she got hurt, but Zazie's next actions ruled out any chance of that.

She reached behind her head, and dropped a bone mask down over her face.

* * *

"Wow, what's going on there?" Big Man asked back at the school.

Negi looked up from where he was quietly whittling, and saw something on the nearest screens that gave him a chill: Zazie was preparing to fight Asuna, Setsuna and Chachamaru. "No!"

Big Man glanced over, in an uninterested manner. "Is the teacher still here?" he asked, plaintively. "Shouldn't someone have shipped the brat home by now, or pushed him out the door?"

One of the production assistants gave a muttered reply that Negi didn't catch, but Big Man obviously did. "Hmm, you're right. That would be a great last episode. Could the student kill the teacher? Yeah. I like it. But now," he said, turning back to the screens while Negi's chills multiplied at the merest mention of having to fight his students, "what is going on here? Where did that girl get a harisen? And that one – how did she get a sword?"

"It was in one of the schoolbags, and we were running low on weapons to stock the packs," someone called from the editing booth.

"Riiight," Big Man sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose with forefinger and thumb. "And where did that one get exploding rocket fists, and the other one the white mask?"

"Don't know," came the voice from the editing booth again.

"It's a class of monsterssss," Nitta mumbled from his bed, away from Negi's. "Evil, evil monsters. Magic! Demons! Robots! Ninjas. At least the most evil turned her homework in on time."

"Evangeline's not that bad!" Negi countered without thinking.

"I'm talking about Chizuru!" Nitta replied. "Her ideas for fruits and vegetables belong in the dark ages."

Negi fell silent again, trying to watch the battle as it unfolded. He watched in close-up as Zazie dropped the white mask across her face, and then something happened... an energy wave exploded outwards from her, a wave of black that blew outwards, then dropped down, the darkness growing as if some kind of cloak had erupted from her back. From this cloak of darker night, almost like a magic trick, she pulled a scabbard.

"Is that a katana? Isn't there only one of each weapon on the island? This is crap!" Big Man growled towards the editing booth. The voice inside sighed, but didn't answer immediately. "I asked for one of each weapon.

"There _is_ only one of each weapon on the island. That _we_ put there. Maybe they found some others?"

"I have it on good authority that this island is pristine."

"It was a school! Schools are full of weapons."

"American schools, maybe. Not Japanese schools."

Another sigh from the booth. "Maybe not. But you have to admit, it's a possibility."

"Yeah," Big Man allowed, eventually. He returned to the screen, where Zazie unsheathed the sword. Strangely, it had a black blade, with a metallic white cutting edge. She swung it in circles around her, making the moves of impressive skill look like a circus performance. She was trying to intimidate the others, Negi realised. She must have thought there was a threat before her.

A quick reverse shot of the group showed that of the three girls facing her, only Chachamaru didn't betray immediate fear. Something was going on, and Negi realised the girls' hair was being blown around... directly away from Zazie. She was still pumping out energy, black tendrils snaking around her like a demonic halo.

Then, she stepped forward again.

* * *

The rear lounge wall exploded beside the bookcase, sending a small shower of debris and dust billowing into the Ai Sou's lounge. Ami coughed, waving her hands in front of her as she got up from where she had been watching the television moments before, and ran to the metre-high hole to see what had caused it. Some part of her brain registered the wall as the one that backed onto Hotaru's room, but Hotaru wasn't strong enough to blow a hole in the wall like had just happened.

And to be honest, Ami had to admit blowing holes in walls wasn't exactly Saturn's style, either. There would have been no wall left, nor much of the room behind it, had it been Sailor Saturn that had done this. So who?

Quietly, up the hall, Hotaru's door slid open, and Hotaru stepped out. She looked strangely calm and composed, not the shy-but-occasionally-excitable girl Ami was used to seeing. She was much more reserved, and held herself differently.

With only a slight mental switch in how she saw the younger girl, Ami saw Saturn's fuku imprinted across Hotaru's body, and realised it was Saturn's eternal composure she was seeing, the cold sentinel of the solar system. Hotaru/Saturn walked past Ami, through the lounge to nearly the front door. Tiny tap-taps in the hall made Ami glance behind, to see Shinku arrive from upstairs, a concerned look on her face. Hotaru didn't pause until she stopped near a piece of rubble, reached down and picked something out of it. She held it up.

It wore a pink dress.

Hotaru tossed it back across the room with as much thought and concern as something throwing some clothes into a laundry hamper. "I am not one for games," she said, eyeing Shinku seriously. "I will not allow such... _antics_."

"She was – is," Shinku corrected herself, "very childish. But she is only a child. Poor Hina Ichigo. Is she still alive, I wonder?"

"Her life force hasn't yet passed back to its source," Hotaru said, her voice not changing in tone from her cold sentence before. Ami realised she was very, very angry.

"I shall make sure she sees the error of her ways," Shinku replied primly, before gathering the shattered doll in her arms and giving Hotaru a last glare before retreating at a dignified pace upstairs.

"Was that necessary?" Ami asked Hotaru, trying to see some aspect of her friend inside the body in front of her. "I'm sure she meant –"

"None of you have seen what is going on here," Hotaru replied, dismissively. "It is therefore not my concern." She headed back towards her room, but stopped at the hole in the wall. Her gaze was as emotionless as before, as she eyed the hole, and then the bookcase next to it. After a moment's consideration, she stepped to the other side of the bookcase, and with a single hand pushed it across the floor to fully cover the gaping maw to Hotaru's bedroom.

After Hotaru had returned to her room and closed the door, Ami quietly crossed the floor to the bookcase, and rested a hand on it before trying to shove it.

The bookcase wouldn't move in the slightest for her.

Behind her, Cologne watched with slitted eyes from the dining table.

* * *

"How has your stay been so far?" Makoto asked as she fell into step beside Setsuna, as the former senshi walked towards the cafeteria. The question was asked with a bit of a wry grin, Setsuna noticed, so she returned with a slight smile.

"It has been... different. It is unusual to see Mars like... this." She gestured to the walls of the UAC base.

"How is it in your timeline? Where Crystal Tokyo was beautiful and brilliant?"

Setsuna ignored the slight touch of sarcasm in the words, instead allowing her mind to roll back to before Yoshihiro's ship had crashed into the Time Gate and broke the only protection time had against abuse. "Green, mostly. Oh, there's the northern ocean, and another engineered ocean in the equatorial latitudes, but it's mostly green. A blue sky now, too. Living space for humanity and other races to expand peacefully."

"What about Earth?"

"Don't you remember it?"

"It was a long time ago I was there. And really, we only saw anything of Crystal Tokyo. We didn't get out much, if you recall."

"It was... outside the city, it was beautiful in areas. But it was a slow process trying to reclaim everything. Mars was surprisingly easier, since it was ruined and uninhabited and could just be remade, but Earth... Earth was still populated, and living, and the planet itself rebelled against any more changes. Progress was being made, though. Great progress. The planet was growing again. While the land was still brown from space, the oceans and rivers were again a bright dazzling blue. It was a long process, but it was gaining speed all the time. And it was... peaceful. Neo Queen Serenity provided for all who needed, those who didn't worked for those who couldn't. A time of peace and growing prosperity for all." Setsuna allowed herself a small, contented sigh as she thought back, a smile touching her lips again. "I miss it greatly. The work, the effort, the people. The people were what made it all worth it. Having been through hell before the formation of Crystal Tokyo, but helping rebuild the planet into a beautiful place. You would never again see anything like it."

"Evidence that people can be better than they often are?"

"Yes. In a time of great need, where everyone reveals the goodness in their hearts."

"With the senshi at the top of the ladder?"

"With a leading body of senshi, yes."

"Is that the right choice?"

"I don't understand," Setsuna said, confused. "I thought the point of all this effort being expended was to get me home, to make things as they were."

Makoto continued as if Setsuna hadn't spoken. "Because, it seems weird to me, that when we were in the future, we didn't really see that. We saw a cold sterile paradise, and only senshi. Ranma, many, many years ago, told Hotaru the future he could see was one of us lording it over our fellow humans. Crystal Tokyo only being for the special people, the beautiful people, rather than the people who needed out help most. What you're describing sounds awfully like that."

"The future was hard, yes," Setsuna interrupted, "but that's because the Earth was nearly destroyed. It needed healing. The best way to rehabilitate a people and a planet is to make them do it together."

"Serenity could have done it easily. Usagi – my Usagi – did it, twice. Three times if you count what she did at the moment of her death. And that's it. None of this 'but it was populated' crap, because she would still have been able to reform the planet."

"People don't always want help being handed to them. They don't like the thought of charity, and often feel they are beholden to the person who helped them. This then means they become not free, but enslaved by a different kind of rule. Like your Usagi would have been had the world rolled over. She gave the human race what it – what she – wanted. What did it bring?" Setsuna raised her voice little. "A lot of deaths. A lot of people falling from the sky in unpowered planes, a lot of people in hospital dying simply because their life support machinery switched off. Why would they hate being helped like that?"

"It wasn't what she did, it was how she did it," Makoto countered quickly. "No one's denying that Usagi's heart was in the right place, just that her head wasn't tempered by experience."

"And that experience showed her that sometimes people have to do things _for themselves._"

The two women reached the cafeteria door, and paused. "I hope your belief is right," Makoto said, quietly before opening the door. "But, still, I will be sending someone back with you."

"Why?"

"Because, frankly, we don't know if sending you back makes things like they are, or if they make things like they were. We hope the latter, of course, but fear the former may still be the case. So we'll be sending someone back who's studied the history of that time, read all the diaries left behind after the war, and most of all, someone who doesn't already exist back in that time."

"You don't trust me," Setsuna sounded a little bitter, and Makoto couldn't help but feel sorry.

"It's not that, Setsuna, and you know it. It's that as the histories say, you disappeared _before_ Usagi made her choice. We don't exactly know what was going through your mind, but you dropped out of sight before Usagi turned Tokyo into Crystal Tokyo."

"I wonder why?"

"I wonder, indeed?" Makoto echoed, almost as wonderingly as Setsuna. She knew, but she wouldn't tell for the moment.

Inside the cafeteria, Chao sat with Sailors Dione and Charon, the two senshi's backs to the door. Chao caught sight of them, and quietened the two girls before standing and gesturing to the two elder senshi. "Would you like...?" Makoto asked, waving at the table. Charon half-turned, caught sight of Setsuna, then turned back, the set of her shoulders hardening.

"Yes," Setsuna replied, grabbing some food from the benches at the front of the room, then making her way back with Makoto to the other table. She sat next to Chao, across the table from Dione. Makoto sat on Chao's other side, with Charon sitting opposite the Meltrandi. "We all meet again."

"Yes," Charon answered immediately, her single word snapping across the table. Setsuna was taken aback a little by the harshness of the answer.

"How was everything after we left?"

"About as you'd expect," Dione answered, a little more diplomatically. "We managed to dig another fifty metres before it got too cold even for the Meltrandi to continue."

"I don't know why you don't have machinery doing the digging," Setsuna wondered aloud. "I mean, the Meltrandi are great with this kind of thing, but machinery can work all day and night without slowing or having to stop for temperature."

"It not that," Chao replied. "It more... hmm. It more that we are under intense scrutiny from Earth at most times. They know there is a Zentraedi colony here, so they keep a close eye on the surface. Are we going to return to our warlike ways. It's the same reason the senshi can't power up and blast the gate out."

"How long would it take Earth authorities to get forces here?"

Makoto fielded the question. "With the time for the landing ships to touch down, load up Evangelions and Gundams, head back to orbit and fold here would be maybe six hours. The fold displacement to Mars would be the shortest time. Over ninety-five percent of that would be landing, loading and launching the transports."

"Valkyries of whatever designation could be here in a matter of minutes, after the attachment of a fold pack," Chao added helpfully.

"Could you hold them off?" Setsuna wondered aloud again.

"Maybe for a time," Makoto replied after considering. "I won't lie and say it's not something we've ever thought about or drilled for. It's just the level of force Earth could level against us is tremendous and most of it is developed as anti-senshi weapons."

"Under a concerted attack, once the transports arrive," Charon spoke up, "we would last approximately two and a half hours. At most, on a good day with everything going right for us and wrong for them."

"You managed to fight for a year in the war before being overrun by Evangelions."

Charon snorted. "Except, most of us were younger and less capable of containing or controlling our power. As well, although more experienced now, most of us haven't fought as a senshi in decades, if not centuries. In Makoto's case, a millennium. And we wouldn't be fighting the dozen or so Evangelions that attacked us in the war. No, we'd be facing well over a hundred."

"You fought that Evangelion on Earth easily enough," Setsuna continued, turning to Chao, who looked embarrassed as she got an evil glare from Makoto.

"You're in trouble," Sayo chimed as she drifted behind Chao.

"I was covered in magical runes, protecting me from a lot of damage," Chao replied, blushing with a wide but nervous smile on her face. "And I train, constantly, to fight Evangelions. Most of the Zentraedi here don't train as hard, or at all. They're mostly here because of the subtle prejudice on Earth against my people. And, most of all, I was facing off against one Evangelion unit. The others weren't there yet. We would be inundated with Evangelions, loaded for senshi. One on one? No problem. One on a dozen? Not so good odds for the poor Meltrandi girl caught in the middle."

"I think you sell yourself short," Setsuna replied, "but I guess I can see your point. The question is, at some point this week, we are going to have to fire up that ancillary Time Gate and it could take time to power up. If that triggers something on Earth, we may need to hold out for some time. Can it be done?"

Charon shot a glance at Makoto, before lowering her eyes and answering fiercely. "It would be done." The younger senshi stood suddenly, scraping her chair away from the table, and returning her plates to a provided tray before leaving.

Dione's eyes followed her, then she too stood, and bowed at Setsuna. "Always an honour." She followed Charon out the door dutifully as a friend.

Setsuna eyed her meal with less enthusiasm than she was considering it before. She stabbed at it with her fork, trying to rekindle some kind of interest in the possible taste of the food, but with little luck. She gave a dejected sigh.

"This will happen, relax," Makoto said. "Besides, I joined you coming down here to introduce you to your partner who will be going back with you."

"Who's that?" Chao asked, before she realised both Makoto and Setsuna were staring at her. "Oh."

* * *

The waves of dark energy washing off Zazie were intense. Sailor Ceres hadn't felt anything like it before, not even from the Dark Kingdom monsters she had fought and lived with. Even Umiko, worst of the Master's current crop of allies, didn't feel this bad to be around.

It was power, raw power washing off her. Spiritual pressure that battered at Ceres' core and clothing. Zazie's blade seemed to hum, and to Ceres, it seemed as if the bone mask covering Zazie's face also hummed in concert with it.

Beside her, she felt Asuna tense, ready to launch herself at the other girl, but even as Ceres reached out an arm to catch Asuna as she passed by, Asuna was moving, her harisen shifting form unbidden into that of a mighty sword. She swung it at Zazie, an in articulate roar erupting from her mouth, but Zazie swatted her away.

"Is this another form of Menos?" Ceres asked Chachamaru and Setsuna, both behind him feeling very worried.

"No," Setsuna replied through gritted teeth as she watched Asuna flung into a tree that snapped and splintered where Asuna hit it.

"It is unlikely Zazie is a standard Shinigami, with Menos companions. It is more likely she is some kind of mix of Shinigami and Hollow, but which element was her starting point – be it a Shinigami transformed into a half-Hollow creature, or a Hollow given Shinigami powers - I cannot say."

"Thanks, robot girl," Ceres replied, as Zazie left forward at speeds Ceres hadn't seen in a long time.

It was almost as if the circus girl had simply appeared closer to her, but Ceres knew that it was more likely the girl was pulling some kind of full-body version of a kachu tenshin amaguriken move, using either training or sheer power to move faster than the human eye could match. As the girl's blade hissed through the air, Ceres bent backwards at the hips to allow the katana to pass through where she had been standing, and once the sword had passed by, she planted her hands on the ground behind her, and flipped over backwards to a standing position while hoping to catch Zazie in a double kick as her legs passed by.

However, Zazie had moved already, and was behind Ceres. Obviously, she'd targeted Ceres as the major threat in the present group, and was targeting her first. She stabbed out with the point of her blade, hoping to catch Ceres in the small of her back, but Ceres' right hand moved of its own accord grabbed her own midsection and hauled herself out of the way.

"Watch out!" Asuna heard the small squeaky voice say again from Ceres' right hand.

Ceres spun immediately, her left hand up and held side on at Zazie's throat level, but again the circus girl shimmered and was behind Ceres again, already spinning to bring her sword in close enough to strike. Ceres jumped, flipping over the blade, but Zazie changed direction in mid-slice, and brought it upwards. Bouncing off her own subconsciously-wrought frame of reference, Ceres managed to dodge most of the unexpected attack, but still caught a nick as the sword passed through the left side of her midsection.

It was a thin cut, and barely enough to make Ceres hiss in sudden unexpected pain, but no more damage was done. Zazie quickstepped back, allowing Ceres a few seconds for realisation to seep in. It didn't take long. Ceres dropped her eyes from her opponent to the shallow gash in her side, which she could see bleeding through the tear in her fuku. "What?" she asked, stupidly. "I thought we were invulnerable like this?"

"Like what?" Setsuna asked from behind. Ceres ignored her, staring at the blood welling up and staining the white fuku.

"I have no data," Chachamaru replied. "Chao did not give me data on this combatant."

"We can be hurt," Hotaru stage-whispered to Sailor Ceres. "It's just very difficult to do. You should know that! Our fights in the System, and against some of the other monsters."

"Oh yeah," Ceres replied, hand scratching the back of her head in embarrassment "I keep thinking I'm like normal, but I'm not." She pressed her torso. "I'm a lot more vulnerable like this."

"Then why don't you power up again?" Hotaru asked. "I'm sure you could take someone of this power level easily. Don't forget, you fought Sailor Saturn unpowered, and that was –"

"That was different," Ceres sighed, checking the now-closing wound. "You didn't really want to hurt me, you were wanting to hurt yourself but couldn't do it directly. And what did I do? Really? I stayed out of your way, mostly. Even powered right up, I might have trouble with this girl. That robot girl back there," Ceres thumbed her left hand at Chachamaru behind them, "said her friends were spirit creatures, right? So she's gotta be some kind of spirit creature herself. A monster from beyond the grave. I don't know if I can kill something that's already dead."

"You shouldn't be wanting to kill anything!" came Hotaru's shocked response.

"Bad choice of words. But the point remains, how do you beat something that's already dead?"

"If it is a Shinigami," Chachamaru offered from behind, "attacking their chest to sever her chain of fate would either remove her from this plane of reality permanently and send her to the next cycle, or effectively turn her into a Hollow, allowing you to do the same by slicing her mask in two."

Before Ceres or Chachamaru could react, Zazie flickered, then appeared next to the gynoid, bringing her katana down on Chachamaru's throat. Chachamaru wasn't quite able to get her full forearm up in time to deflect the attack, but in the event, it wouldn't have made much difference. The blade sliced through the protective arm as if it wasn't there, but it slid off in a direction Zazie hadn't expected and buried itself halfway through Chachamaru's chest rather than decapitating her.

Chachamaru looked down, an expression of surprise on her face, as Zazie withdrew her blade and gave her first expression in the fight – a very smug sneer half-hidden by the bone mask on her face. The gynoid toppled over a moment after Zazie moved away again at speed, Asuna and Setsuna rushing to her aid.

Zazie flicked back above Ceres, dropping her blade at still super-fast speeds, but Ceres threw herself forward into a dodge, rolled onto her back and lifted her hands before her held together in the shape of a gun. Without speaking, she yelled, "World Breaking!" and a dusty-grey energy ball erupted from her fingertips, blasting through where Zazie had been a scant instant before. "Hey... I didn't know I could do that," Ceres said, looking at her still-pointing fingers. "That's kind of cool." Her right hand moved, and Hotaru coughed.

"Can we not do that again anytime soon?" she asked.

"Sorry, Hotaru-chan," Ceres said, flipping to her feet again. "I can't risk powering up, to answer your question before. If I do, I run the risk of being found, and we don't want to be found right now. She'd be... _very_ angry. I don't know what she'd do."

"Oh. Sailor Ceres! Look out!"

Without looking, Ceres moved to the left as fast as she could, Zazie's blade whistling down her right side and skill managing to scrape some skin and material off her forearm as it went. Thankfully, Ceres reflected, Hotaru was able to move and was uninjured. She was used to fighting as one person, not one person with a midget attached to her wrist, and remembering Hotaru was there was throwing her off. She should have heard that, should have see that, felt it coming. But Ceres was having to deal with something interrupting the flow of her lifeforce in part of her body, and it was very distracting.

Zazie flashed again, appearing further away, looking for an opening. Ceres was very good at dodging, it seemed. Most of her strikes had been intended to be one-shot kills, but obviously Ceres had been able to successfully dodge them all, to varying degrees of success.

Ceres, for her part, was thinking rapidly. "Hotaru, if I step up the pace, can you keep up?"

"What do you mean?"

"I can match her speed, but moving faster than the eye can see, it puts a great strain on your body. I can handle it, but I need to know if you can. I know you're –" Ceres fell silent.

"Weak?" Hotaru asked, before giving a snort. "You can say it, I was a sickly child. Having both Saturn and Mistress 9 in me, and nearly dying as a young child, then being regressed to a baby and back again... there's also a death and rebirth in there, too. I may be weak, but I'll survive."

"My little cockroach," Ceres said with a tender smile directed at her bandaged right hand.

"I thought that was your right hand of doom?" Asuna asked helpfully.

"Idiot, shut up! If talking to her hand makes her feel better and more confident –"

"But what about when her hand talks back?"

Ceres ignored them, and cradled her right hand gently. "If you're sure you can handle this, I'm going to go all out at this level. I won't lie; it's gonna be hard and tiring and I need ya to be firing at all times. That 'death ribbon revolution' thing –"

"Death reborn revolution," Hotaru said, then swore as a blast of energy erupted from her and nearly fried Ceres' head.

"GAH! No doin' that without warning!" Ceres calmed again. "But what I'm tryin' ta say is, it's gonna be hard. Harder on you, because of your... current situation."

"It's okay, Sailor Ceres, go ahead. Use me!"

"Right." Ceres turned to Zazie, who was levelling her blade for another attack. "Let's try this again. This time, it's all-out. We go until one drops. No cheating, no quarter given. We go at it, and we go at it with everythin' we got, right?"

Zazie gave a brief nod, the silence only broken by the near-inaudible screech of a bat. She lowered the point of her katana to face Sailor Ceres directly, pushed a foot backwards in the dirt, creating a small groove to push off from when the time came. She was the perfect embodiment of stillness once she was ready.

Ceres stood ready and loose, shaking her arms and legs one by one, letting the tension go. While she did that, she spoke over her shoulder without taking her eyes off Zazie. "You three. Once I got her fighting, you go. Find somewhere defensible. Somewhere ta hide and be ready ta fight if it comes to it. If I fall, there will be no one else from outside. You'll have ta do this on your own. Stand together, get those collars off, then storm the school. There's enough of ya with fightin' skills to be able to do it. I'm sure ya got mad scientists an' stuff, what with this robot and creepy ninja girl trailing everyone." Finally, she cracked her neck, first to the left, then to the right. "Now, go, go fast and get everyone off this island alive."

Asuna, Chachamaru and Setsuna nodded in unison, watching and watching now as Ceres took up a crouched pose, with left hand reaching forward, fingers poised to grapple while her right hand stayed down low in a blocking position close to her stomach. Her eyes grew cold and hard, watching now. Setsuna shivered; no matter what Sailor Ceres was dressed like now, she was a very skilled fighter in hand-to-hand combat.

She suddenly felt very hopeful of the outcome.

Still... as Asuna had pointed out earlier, Ceres' accent shifted when she got nervous about something, and it was about as shifted as one's accent could get right now. Did that mean she wasn't confident of success? Wasn't confident of protecting the class? Or was there something else she was scared about right now?

Setsuna took another look at Ceres' right hand. It wasn't just in a blocking position. No, she was holding it to herself, cradling it, as if it was something very precious to her rather than merely injured. The fact Ceres had been able to deal devastating attacks from it suggested that it wasn't in fact injured, but there was something else going on.

Chachamaru had already stepped back, seeing Zazie's attention purely on Sailor Ceres, and Setsuna realised that it was time they make their departure. She touched Asuna lightly on the shoulder, and the two began backing slowly, one step at a time, a few steps behind Chachamaru.

There was an almost imperceptible nod from Ceres, and the two combatants blurred with speed, then disappeared. Almost immediately, Chachamaru froze. Taking her lead, so did Setsuna. The gynoid's head spun as if on a wheel, spouting gibberish that sounded like a record sped up far too fast for human understanding.

But Setsuna knew what she was saying. She could feel the microbursts in air pressure erupting from punches and kicks and attacks, just not differentiate between any of the standard attacks and blocks. She could only spot the big differences.

The two fighters were just moving far too fast and far too much for anyone but the artificial girl to even spot them.

A punch, a kick, a block, a punch. _Was fighting ever really this repetitive?_ Ceres thought to herself when she had a moment to think. Fighting at high speed, Zazie and herself danced around the clearing, around the other three girls, while making strikes, blocks and counter-strikes. Hotaru was holding up well, but Ceres was hardly using her. No, most of the work Ceres used her right arm for was using her forearm or bicep to block incoming strikes. Hotaru was being shaken and was probably unable to draw a breath at the speed Ceres was moving, but the idea of this fight was to end it in under ten seconds.

She was at about eight now. Another two seconds, maximum. While she had more reserves she could call on, if she couldn't defeat Zazie in that time, then she was going to have to pull back, go for round two at another time. Just right now, she had to keep fighting.

Ceres blocked another swipe from Zazie's blade with her right shoulder. The blade cut in, but Zazie pulled it out before it sunk in too deeply. Ceres thought maybe she was enjoying the fight, something she seemed to prove by dancing back and taunting Ceres to come at her again. Never one to pass up such a pleasant invitation from a woman, Ceres skipped forward, bringing her left hand up to make a strike at her opponent's throat with two of her fingers outstretched. Zazie smiled under her bone mask, however, and stepped sideways while bringing her blade up to Ceres' undefended stomach.

Realising too late that she couldn't pull her left hand back to protect herself, and that the blade was angled to catch Hotaru – which Zazie had to be thinking was an injury rather than something that Ceres felt was too precious to risk in combat – Ceres panicked.

But an instant before Zazie's blade bit home, the katana stopped dead. Ceres looked down; Zazie did likewise. Two small arms had broken from the bandages covered Ceres' right hand, and had caught the blade between the even-smaller hands.

More to Ceres' relief, there was no blood on the blade's edge. Zazie blinked in surprise, then leapt back, her dark cloak disappearing as she sheathed her blade. A moment later, her bone mask disintegrated into slivers of light on the evening's breeze, and then a moment later, she was gone.

As Zazie left, Ceres dropped her speed back into normality. She panted a little, as Asuna and Setsuna blinked in surprise at the sudden appearance of the senshi, while Chachamaru gave Ceres a cursory glance, then looked upwards.

"Are you all right?" Asuna gushed as she ran forward, broken free of her immobility. Setsuna followed a moment later.

"Are you injured?" she asked, eyeing Ceres' wounds. Most were closing as she watched.

"I'm fine, really," Ceres said, waving the two girls off. Setsuna and Asuna fell silent almost immediately. "What?" She glanced up to see the two girls focussed on her right hand. A quick glance showed that the bandages had fallen off, and Hotaru now sat, revealed to the world. She gave an embarrassed chuckle.

"Hello," she added, blushing and bowing.

"Master," Chachamaru said, from the back of the group.

"No, no, not at all," Hotaru said, blushing even further. Ceres looked up as a teenager in a brief leather outfit, pointed hat and cape descended from the sky, surrounded by bats.

"Not you, you idiot. Her."

"Oh."

"Chachamaru. It's good to see you. How is boya?"

"I have not been able to penetrate the school. We have been defending the other students from predatory attacks by Zazie and Mana."

"Zazie, eh? I didn't think she'd get involved in this at all." The vampire turned to Sailor Ceres. "And who might you be?"

"The defender of life and love, the pretty dusty soldier Sailor Ceres."

"And you?"

Ceres sighed, and held Hotaru up. "Say hello to my little friend."

"Hello," Asuna said, feeling slightly stupid.

"Please to meet you. My name is Hotaru," Hotaru replied.

"The cameras can see you," Evangeline said dryly.

"Oh! I'm the... the Fairy of the Forest," Hotaru covered quickly. Ceres groaned.

"Well, fairy, we've got some planning to do. Right now. Like, how to stop this. Right?"

"Right," Hotaru agreed in a strong voice.

TO BE CONTINUED..

SAILOR MOON SAYS: Lots of fighting this chapter. Loooots of fighting. Next chapter has more Chisame, coming to grips with a not-so-technophobic ghost, and the Fairy of the Forest introduces herself to the rest of the cast.


	15. Chapter 15

**DISCLAIMER:** Relatively standard stuff. Existing characters are properties of the people who made them up. Mitsuki, and several other characters are mine, and so's the story, hence ownership and copyright of them belongs to me. Contact me at my usual email address if you want permission to use anything I've written for whatever purposes. As per usual, I'm having formatting ripped out on upload, and now having line breaks introduced for no apparent reason. I apologise in advance for any formatting errors you may meet.

**Justice**

By

Raymond Cooper

Fall of Grace

Evangeline A.K. McDowell wasn't quite what Sailor Ceres as expecting. She was taller, for a start, a much fuller figure than she'd been led to expect, too. And the black leather outfit, form-fitting and revealing without actually causing Eva's modesty any concern, Ceres had to admit this young woman could pull off the sex kitten look better than almost anyone she'd ever met.

Eva frowned as Ceres' gaze drifted downwards yet again. "I know I'm the most stunning creature you have ever laid eyes on, but really, do you have to keep losing track of what I'm saying? Can't you listen, then drink me in with your eyes? Who knows? Afterwards, I might just feel up to a little adult play."

Eva would have continued, but Asuna's harisen smacked Eva around the back of her head, and the gothic vampire staggered forward, eyes bulging in surprise. "It's not bad enough you keep hitting on the ten year old, now you've got to be hitting on the girl who rescued us from Zazie as well? Stick to one person!"

"Uh, Asuna," Setsuna said from behind, a hand half-held up in warning.

"Right. Stay away from Negi as well!" Asuna delivered another slap with her harisen before stepping back, staying angry and on guard.

The girls were away from their normal cave hideout, in a decent-sized clearing on a forest path. Around them, they had a good fifteen metres on any side before the tree line, which was sparsely populated by shrubs and trees for another dozen metres. The girls Asuna led were clustered in the middle of the clearing, with those who knew any kind of self defence standing around the perimeter of the group. If someone came at them, the idea was that that had a few seconds to ready themselves and redistribute to where best needed.

Without sitting in the middle of an empty paddock, this was the best the girls could do.

"Sorry," Ceres apologised. "I didn't mean to stare. You just, uh..." She eyed the oh-so-innocently curious Fairy of the Forest attached to her right wrist, and decided silence on that fact was the better part of valour. "You just have some great ideas about taking the school, but we still have the same problem of the explosive collars."

Evangeline gave a hard glare at Asuna. "Acceptable losses, if we get the Springfield brat back."

"That's not what you were saying the other day, Master," Chachamaru reminded her.

"Shut up!" Eva threw back, a light tinge colouring her pale cheeks. She folded her arms and continued on in obvious embarrassment. "Anyway. The fact remains, I can't get back out of here again. You can get out of here, but don't want to, apparently. Idiot. She," Eva glanced down at Hotaru, "could go back wherever she's from. The rest of the people on this island will need help getting off the island, and Negi is the only person who may be capable of that."

"Master, you could –"

"Not another word, Chachamaru. Now, Negi has a helper."

"Is it a good idea to be talking about that to the cameras?" Hotaru asked from Ceres' arm.

"Let them try and stop me. They didn't last time; it was the curse."

"Oh, the cramps are bad, aren't they?" Asuna whacked Hotaru with her harisen. "What?"

Ceres was blushing furiously and looking anywhere but the group in front of her. "I'm not here, I'm with a bunch of cats, cats are nice."

"You hate ca – oh," Hotaru caught on finally. "We have to stop talking about this," she turned to the others, waving her hands widely in a negative gesture. "The big invisible fairy is easily embarrassed about... about women's issues."

Asuna gave Sailor Ceres a hard look. "Why? We're all women here."

Sailor Ceres experienced a sudden coughing fit. "Yes, well, uh, let's move on, eh?" Hotaru gave a wide smile in response.

"Getting back to the point," Eva spoke over the others, "we need to take Negi Springfield back from the classroom. He's our way out of here."

"We're not leaving Negi behind," Asuna confirmed.

"I've got no plans to leave anyone from your class here," Ceres agreed. "The television crew and soldiers... they're another story. While I should be kind and... and..."

"Magnanimous?" Hotaru chimed in.

"Yeah, that word, I just don't feel it in me to rescue the people who have created and are maintaining this television programme. This is..."

"Repugnant," Hotaru offered again.

"I didn't need help that time, thanks, Fairy."

"Okay, Sailor Ceres."

Ceres sighed and covered her eyes with her left hand at the cheerful demeanour Hotaru displayed. "You're incorrigible." She sighed again before standing up straighter. "Still, I need you all to continue acting as you have."

"As they have?"

"Fighting, arguing amongst ourselves, anything short of serious injury that stops Big Man from blowing us up," Asuna filled Eva in.

"I knew you didn't have that plan in you," Eva smirked, which earned her another crack from Asuna's harisen. "I wish you'd stop doing that and respect that I'm an elder vampire!"

"You haven't done anything yet worthy of my respect," Asuna retorted, pulling her harisen back for another swing.

Eva took on a battle pose of her own, magical energies starting to crackle between her grasping fingertips. "I haven't killed you yet, I should think that was worthy enough of the greatest respect!"

"Exactly like that!" Ceres beamed. "Now, I've got to get around the rest of the island. Get people moving together. That Zazie, she's strong. I don't like her. I want you to keep an eye out for her, understand?" Ceres pointed at Evangeline, who spluttered indignantly.

"What? I – I can tell you – I mean, I'm... do you know who I am?"

"A vampire, apparently," Ceres replied back, taking a quick look around the group. "And remember: save the cheerleader."

"Save the world, I get it," Asuna said, a moment before Ceres flickered and disappeared in an instant. _Off to save the world again, no doubt._ Asuna sighed, and glanced over at Sakurako. "We can keep her safe. That's not a problem. Keeping us safe? That's the problem."

"Contact along the northern perimeter," Chachamaru interrupted, turning to face the direction, hands suddenly out by her side in readiness for combat.

"Who is it?" Evangeline asked, turning to look the same way, all business now that something was happening.

"Mana Tatsumiya. She's moving fast. Not approaching at this time. She's leaving the area. She was approaching from the direction of the cave." Regardless, the girls who had suddenly fortified the northern edge of the group didn't relax until Chachamaru's hands dropped back into a neutral position. "She has gone."

"Chizuru," Misa spoke a little bitterly, almost unnoticed, behind them.

* * *

"So, you're a ghost," Chisame said, wiping her glasses on the front of her shirt. The hazy figure in front of her nodded, or seemed to. It was hard to tell. The sun was shining, and it was almost a full day after Chisame's laptop started tapping out letters by itself.

Chisame still didn't believe it. While the class was full of weirdos, she was not one of them. It was impossible there was a ghost, wasn't it? This Sayo girl was something in Chisame's eyes. There had to be mercury in the water or something she bathed in and stayed near, and she was going mad. The hazy shape in front of her was nothing more than a localised cataract, or burst blood vessels, or the product of her own brain trying to make sense of her own madness. Yet, still, knowing this, the shape talked to Chisame.

Oh, it hadn't been a shape at first. In fact, it had taken the better part of the day for Chisame to be able to see anything. Sayo had first talked through the laptop, then eventually, in the late hours of the night, Chisame had first heard a thin, reedy voice speaking to her while the keys tapped. The voice grew stronger in the following hours, and eventually in the morning hours, Chisame could even see her – first a blob, now a fuzzy, indistinct person. But with every passing minute, every time Chisame glanced at the shape, it grew more distinct, to the point that Chisame now swore she could see an old-fashioned Mahora Academy uniform on the figure.

"And you're really a ghost." This point was very important to Chisame. It was something she just couldn't understand, no matter how hard she tried. She tried to distance herself from weirdness, but now she was trapped on an island, wondering how many people had seen her naked online on this Battle Royale television show, had met a magical girl in a grey skirt with bright red hair, and now was being haunted by a ghost. At Sayo's next nod, Chisame raised a hand to her forehead. "I need to sit down."

"You are sitting down," Sayo helpfully offered.

"Yes, I am, aren't I? Then maybe I need to stand up."

"I'm standing up! Or I would be if I had feet." The ghost-shaped blob looked down at where a person's feet would normally be, but Sayo's legs ended halfway between her knees and ankles, her body drifting into an indistinct vapour cloud. "I guess I'm floating up."

"How did you die?"

"I don't know. Maybe I was murdered? Maybe I was hit by a car. Maybe I was killed by soldiers?" When Sayo saw how Chisame reacted to the last comment, she retracted it. "I don't know how I died," she admitted. "I was alive, then I was dead. That's kind of how it happens, I think."

"Being dead is generally considered being a prerequisite for being a ghost," Chisame agreed with a disbelieving tone in her voice. She shook her head. "No. If I'm going mad, and going mad by myself, then I might as well go mad all the way. I'm Chisame, but you already knew that. How long have you been part of our class?"

"I remember the war," Sayo offered after a few moments thought.

"Iraq? The Falklands? Vietnam?"

"In the Pacific, I think. It was a long time ago, and I wasn't very good with geography." Sayo thought some more. "We were at war with someone."

"The Americans?" Chisame asked, disbelievingly. "The war in Asia?"

"Americans? I don't remember. I think there were big flying things."

"We call those planes," Chisame returned, dryly, pushing her glasses back up her nose.

"No... these were bigger than planes. But it was a long time ago, and I don't remember very well." Sayo shook her head. "It was a very long time ago. And I can't write anything down, so I can't count off how many days have gone past. I lost track at ten thousand. When I realised I wasn't going anywhere, and no one could see me, I stopped keeping track of things like that. It wasn't very helpful and only made me lonely." The ghost seemed to turn away a little, before drifting into a sitting position on a rock opposite Chisame. "And then I was at school, in class, while you were in Kyoto, and then I was here."

"Do you remember what happened?" Chisame asked, leaning forward eagerly. It was the first she'd heard about how they'd been taken, and the knowledge was far too tempting to resist.

"No, I was just in class, and then I was in a classroom with you all and then one of the twins was like me."

"Like y– a ghost?"

"No. Alive, then dead. Maybe she's a ghost, too. I don't know if it's an instant thing." Sayo looked thoughtful. "I can't remember seeing my body. But I can't remember a lot about long ago."

"You're very talkative for a ghost."

"I haven't talked to anyone for such a very long time," Sayo replied. "I am enjoying this immensely."

"I'll bet you are," Chisame muttered. She heard something behind her, and turned to see Sailor Ceres standing from a crouch. She guessed the sound was the magical girl impacting on the ground from a height. "It's you," she said, narrowing her eyes. "Since you've been here last –"

"Oh, you've made friends," Ceres said cheerfully. "Or _a_ friend," she amended.

"Hello!" Sayo said, brightly.

"Hello!" Hotaru replied back, equally as bright in her disposition.

"That's new," Chisame remarked, her eyes locked on Ceres' right hand. "That's... wow. I'm not seeing ghosts, then, I'm just going quietly insane."

Ceres held Hotaru up and looked at her. "Nope. If you are, I am, too, and so's the rest of your classmates. They can all see her as well. But if you're like me, you get used to this kinda stuff happening all the time. You know, guys turnin' into girls and pigs and, and cats, and demons, ghosts, perverts, the works. Heck, even parallel worlds and time travel. Seen it all."

"Maybe you have, but I haven't. It's not good. It's very unsettling."

"You want it to all go away?"

"Yes!"

"Oh," said Sayo. Chisame turned instantly.

"Not you, just the weirdness. You're like my private madness."

"Oh?" Sayo repeated, this time confused. "I... guess that's better, then."

Turning back to Sailor Ceres, Chisame asked, "So what is it this time?"

"In the morning, I want you to start heading to meet up with everyone else," Ceres said. She gestured north of Chisame's position. "There's a cave in that direction. Asuna and about half the others will be there. I'd like you to slowly make your way down there tomorrow, meet up with the others." She glanced at the ghost. "You go, too. Lead the way. Look out for anyone who shouldn't be there and warn Chisame about it, okay?"

"Okay!" Sayo replied eagerly. "I'm useful at last!"

Chisame deigned not to reply and pushed her glasses up her nose to hide her eyes.

Ceres' gaze switched from the ghost back to Chisame. "Take your laptop. Drop the net idol routine if you want, I dunno."

"Net idol?" Hotaru piped up.

"Welcome to Chiu, Hotaru."

"Wow! A real live net idol!"

Chisame coloured and tilted her head just enough for her hair to swing down across her face. "It was a secret."

"Unless you know what you're looking for, it's not that obvious. I was just pulling your leg yesterday. That particular revelation they seem to be keeping mostly under wraps. Maybe something big for another episode."

Chisame shook her head slowly. "Don't do that again. I'm not enjoying any of this. I just want to go home, back to the school, and... I don't even want to go back to that place after this school trip. I couldn't face anyone again."

Ceres sighed, then stepped closer to Chisame, wrapping her right arm around Chisame's back. This had the effect of Hotaru peering down Chisame's shirt for the moment, which, after a small cough, was rectified so she didn't look quite so much like a lecherous fairy. Ceres fished around down the front of her fuku, looking for something she'd stowed. "I found something for you earlier. It should cheer you up greatly." Finally grabbing the item somewhere down her cleavage, Ceres extracted a make-up pencil triumphantly. Hotaru cast some jealous eyes at Ceres' left hand, which Ceres wisely decided to ignore.

"A make-up pencil," Chisame said woodenly, staring at the item.

"Yeah. I found it on one of the paths on my way through the forest. I thought I'd save it for a rainy day, but the Rainyday girl, she didn't look like she needed it." Ceres grinned widely at her own bad pun, quite pleased. "So, I thought I'd give it to my favourite net idol."

"And she was unavailable?" Chisame snapped, reaching out and grabbing the pencil before extricating herself from Ceres' comradely embrace. The magical girl felt and acted a little too much like a man for her liking. "Really. What am I supposed to do with this? Draw intricate runes on my face that summon the old gods to this island to get me off? Ooooh living tattoos, maybe, that kill anyone who tries to harm me. Or maybe I can draw a door and get out of here?"

"I'm... pretty sure it's just a normal make-up pencil," Ceres said, baffled now and glancing down at Hotaru for help. "At least, I don't think it does anything like that. Pretty sure it just... ya know... is used for make-up purposes. Just thought, being a net idol an' all, and being without make-up, that ya might appreciate it more than anythin' else I can give right now."

"As far as she goes, this is a pretty good apology," Hotaru stage-whispered before Ceres flicked the back of her head.

"Just remember. Tomorrow morning, leave it until then because it's probably too dangerous to travel at night. Keep going that way, until ya reach the cave. The girls should be there. They can take care of ya. They're pretty good fighters. But if ya see that Zazie girl, stay away. Stay hidden. Right?" She glanced at Sayo for confirmation. The ghost gave an emphatic nod, glad to be of use. "Well, I gotta go speak to the others as well, so, uh, I'm gonna head off now. You'll be fine."

Chisame sighed, and hung her head for a moment as Ceres prepared to leap away again. "Before you go. Please know that I do appreciate this. I'm just – I'm just stressed."

Ceres gave a lop-sided grin in reply, almost shy, from a face obviously not used to being thanked or apologised to. "It's fine. I know. Just remember: listen to the ghost." Then, a twitch of her skirt and a squeak of her boots, and she was gone, a long trail of an excited scream from Hotaru disappearing into the darkening sky of the late afternoon.

* * *

Lunchtime the next day, and Sailor Ceres launched herself from her latest meeting with some of the girls from the class. Earlier that morning, she'd sent the two manga artists Asuna's way, and again had the uncomfortable sensation of being ogled by a woman, and now she was leaving a group of three girls on the edge of a field.

Ayaka Yukihiro, Chizuru Naba and Makie Sasaki watched as she vanished in a blur of white and grey. Moments later, the alarm sounded through their collars that it was time to move to a new location.

"This is almost a grand adventure," Ayaka said, trying to make the most of the situation. "An exclusive holiday, just for us, on an island unspoiled by tourists."

"And only spoiled by explosive collars and men with guns," Makie grumbled as she picked her way through long strands of grass towards the relative safety of the tree line and the nearest boundary.

"Don't be so finicky about it," Chizuru smiled at Makie's pessimism. "I'm sure, once we're under the trees again, that I can find a root that will take that negativity away!"

Makie's hands found their way down to protect her backside. "Uh uh, no way Chizuru. I've heard what you're like with vegetables. You're not getting me undressed."

"Who said I would need to undress you?"

"How can you threaten someone like that with such a peaceful and calm smile?" Makie demanded, scooting further away and stepping in under the trees.

"Years of practise," Chizuru replied happily. She turned to Ayaka. "So, we might as well start now for Asuna's group. Everyone will be gathering there eventually. And the nice fairy girl of the forest did say we should start moving while it was light."

Ayaka frowned. "I agree. But... I don't know about the other things the girl said. Students killing students? Maybe in America, but not in Japan."

"There's Nevada," Makie reminded the class president. "And that concrete girl." Makie shivered. "And the rumours of that Hell Girl website."

"They are exceptions to the rule. They are statistical anomalies. And that website is just a rumour," Ayaka flustered. "But that's not what I mean. I don't mean other schools. I mean Mahora. No one kills anyone at Mahora."

"Someone was killed once, though," Chizuru said, thoughtfully with a finger to her cheek as she tried to remember something. "But it was so long ago that I heard it."

"But here and now, students don't kill other students." Ayaka frowned. "It is just so bad I don't have a phone with me at the moment to call for a ride for us all to get off this island."

"The collars would still be trouble," Makie reminded the taller girl.

"Well, yes, but one step at a time," Ayaka said. "After all, with the money of the Yukihiro Group, we could -" She wasn't able to say anything more, as what looked to be a branch swung out hard and fast from a tree, and hit Ayaka square in the chest. The tall blond staggered back, a surprised expression on her face.

Reacting quickly, Chizuru pushed Makie in the back. "Run! Run as fast as you can!" The gymnast fled into the trees, while Chizuru gave a look back and gave a single step in Ayaka's direction. She saw Ayaka topple backwards, the expression of surprise still frozen on her face as blood soaked the front of her shirt where her ribs didn't look quite right. The boneless manner in which she fell gave Chizuru no doubt in what had happened, and without a second look, she turned and pelted into the trees herself.

* * *

"Three and a half days to go," Nemesis said to Makoto as she flicked through pages in a PDA. "Are you sure they'll both be enough?"

"They will be. We've got no records or memories of Chao being there last time." Makoto took a sip from a mug as she thumbed through her own data, shifting boxes of information from one section to another and occasionally drawing connecting lines between them with a finger as she read. "We can't risk changing too much because of the unpredictability factor. Ideally, all the senshi here could go back. They lived through or came to light after Usagi's war, they'd be perfect to stop her. But, if we did that, we'd have no future to go back to, and we exist then. Chao, she only has ancestors there, and one of her ancestors is from this timeline as it is."

"Would she cease to exist, then?" Nemesis asked idly.

"No. She would if she tried to time travel again, but no, she wouldn't cease to exist."

"What havoc could a full-size Meltrandi wreak in Tokyo, a thousand years ago?"

"Too much, but she'd keep her head down."

Nemesis grunted. The room was silent for a few minutes as the two continued their work, before Nemesis sighed and looked up. "You know who'd be perfect for the job."

"Stop."

"She helped me. She helped Charon. She helped Shiva, too."

"Just stop. She's got her hands full."

"She'd be wanting to help. To have another crack at –"

"Just stop it, okay? She lost. She failed. End of story. Yoshihiro lost." Makoto shook her head angrily and slammed her PDA down on the table. "If he'd survived, if he'd won – maybe if he had survived, maybe Usagi could have been stopped. If Ranma had managed to save him from his lot – well, maybe again, Usagi could have been stopped. But you remember what she was like. So full of the honest truth, compassionate love, and relevant justice," Makoto spat the words out, "just enough of each to be completely dangerous."

Nemesis placed her PDA down carefully. "You're still upset you thought she was right."

"She was right so many other times! We all thought she was right that time! And we didn't listen to the people who hadn't been swept along with her through wars and death and life and everything, and she tore a wound in the world that could never be healed!" Makoto's anger was palpable, and she stood quickly, pushing her chair back savagely before stalking over to a solid door and slamming her fist into it. It didn't hurt enough the first time, so she did it again, and again. "We could have stopped her if only we'd thought!"

"I didn't do enough myself," came Nemesis's muttered reply. Makoto could hear the recrimination in the other's voice, and softened immediately.

"It's not your fault. You had your own problems then. And Sailor Shiva to deal with."

"And I did such a _great_ job there," came the bitter response.

"You did the best job you could. You were the only one of us that had any experience with any kind of mental illness."

"It wasn't so much an illness as a response to –"

"I know, I know," Makoto held her hands up. "Bad choice of words when dealing with Shiva back then. I'm sorry. But you're right, in your shorthand way of speaking." Makoto gave a sad smile. "We all could have done a lot more. And the person who tried – well... he'll likely never speak to us again."

"So as I said, ask _her._"

There was a knock at the other door into the room, and both women started, pulling on expressions that were more suited to being seen by others. Nemesis gave a nod after a few moments, then Makoto opened the door to reveal Setsuna.

"How much longer until we go back?" Setsuna asked.

Nemesis checked her PDA. "The Zentraedi are reporting maybe another two days before the gate is uncovered."

"Is it just Chao and I going back, or are we taking equipment with us also?"

"You didn't arrive with anything before, last time around, so no," Makoto replied.

Setsuna gave her a searching glance in response. "Except this time I'm going back with a Zentraedi, right? So you're already changing things."

Makoto and Nemesis exchanged looks. "You're the Senshi of Time. If anyone, you should know what consequences can come from screwing with the timeline."

"That's right," Nemesis took up. "Obviously, it wasn't screwed enough last time, so this time we're screwing it harder." Makoto gave her a disbelieving look. Setsuna raised a sceptical eyebrow. "No, seriously, consider Chao the gimp in the corner with the whi-"

"What Nemesis means is," Makoto rushed, talking over the other woman, "that we want to give you the best possible chance to right things and stop Usagi in the way... the way we were unable to a thousand years ago. We can't all go back, because as far as we can tell, that would just be too much and cause too much of a change. A few additions won't matter much in the overall scheme of things, and Chao knows how to keep out of the way of history."

Setsuna nodded, slowly, but the wheels were still turning inside her head. While she didn't have the part of her that was Sailor Pluto able to talk to her at the moment and walk her through the subtleties of time travel, Makoto made a lot of sense as she could pick it. "This just doesn't feel right. Talking to the others, I disappear before Usagi needs me?"

"Then stop Usagi, change her mind before this happens, before the war becomes a historical fact."

"I can try. But first... who's the other senshi here?"

Makoto glanced back at Nemesis. "Other senshi?" she asked, stalling for time.

"When I arrived, you said there were now four of us here. Presumably, that's you, Mitsuki and I, which leaves one other." Setsuna folded her arms and put the full force of her will behind her glare. She was still taller than Makoto, although not by much, and the psychological effect of that difference still worked in her favour. "I want to know, who is the fourth?"

"The fourth... we can't say."

"You escaped imprisonment; did Sailor Moon escape execution?"

"No," Nemesis replied, bleakly. "She was put to death at the tip of the Lance of Longinus. She's dead."

"That we know of," Makoto amended. "There was never a body, not really. And as much as I hate to admit it, we just don't know what happened at the end. Did she die? We think so. We feel so. That doesn't mean we weren't fooled. She could have made the lie possible; the fact that someone developed Evangelions, Gundams and the like in such a short period of time also suggests there was a lot more going on than most people realise."

"I think she's dead, though," Nemesis countered. "Her giving the Earth life after she'd taken so much from it, that was her through and through."

"There is that," admitted Makoto. "I just prefer not to close the book just yet. In some way, shape or form, she's still with us. Just... not here."

"You're trying to divert me."

"Of course. The fourth... is in no shape to be seen."

Images of a nightmarish nature flashed before Setsuna's eyes. "Is she injured?"

"Not perhaps in the manner you're thinking of."

"Then -"

"She's in no shape to be seen. As much as Usagi died after the war... this one died during the war."

"Wait, is she alive or dead?"

"I think she's both," Nemesis spoke from the back of the room. She glanced at Makoto. "She'll be gone in three days, give or take. Forewarned is forearmed. Show her."

Makoto looked back, indecisively. When she turned back to Setsuna, she looked uncertain. "You have to understand, she's been like this a thousand years. I only took up care of her after I was released. Her and Nemesis escaped capture, but the truth was, she wasn't in any shape to do much fighting. Her heart had been cut out; shortly afterwards, so was her soul."

"She escaped with – wait, Sailor Saturn? Hotaru's here?"

"Yes. Just behind this door." Makoto gestured at the solid door behind her that remained closed. "But she may not be alone. Someone – someone looks after her. She's stated she wishes to remain alone in that duty. We'd be intruding, and she's someone we don't want to intrude on."

Nemesis stepped to the door, and began unlocking it. "I'll go first, in case she's in here. She's not always the most agreeable of people." The final seals turned and retracted from the door frame, and Nemesis heaved the door halfway open before disappearing through it into inky blackness. A few moments later, she returned. "She's not here." She shot a significant glance at Makoto.

"I'll stay out here anyway," the other woman said, before stepping out of Setsuna's way. "Please, if you must, go look. Talk. Maybe it'll do something for her. Just – just don't take too long. We don't know what'll happen if... just don't take too long."

Setsuna gave Makoto a searching stare, while Makoto turned her eyes to the ground and waited. Eventually, Setsuna stepped around her, and passed through the doorway into the darkness beyond.

There was a short corridor that led in before turning to the right. There lay a longer corridor, stretching back, but Setsuna could see illumination at the end. When she left the corridor, she found herself in a room so darkened that she couldn't see the sides, although there was a single strong light stabbing down from what she assumed was the centre of the ceiling, highlighting a single raised slab on the floor. Hotaru lay on this bier, arms at her side, eyes closed and still. No rapid eye movement, no apparent breathing. But also, Setsuna saw as she drew closer, no sign of decay at all. Was she dead? Alive? Trapped somewhere in between?

Finally, she stopped, standing over Hotaru's still form. Nemesis hadn't followed her in, obviously preferring to stay back at the door having been inside once already. Whatever was in here had to be scaring them both.

Or was it more that neither of them seemed to be able to power up to any kind of level? Nemesis was transformed, but running almost on empty. Setsuna figured if she turned her power down anymore, she'd lose her transformation – which made her wonder why she was transformed in the first place.

"It's because she doesn't hear the voices that way. They all sound like one voice: hers," Hotaru's voice said from the darkness. Before Setsuna could spin around, she continued. "No, don't turn around. There's no point to it."

"You sound... different."

"Squeaking, yes? Like a mouse?"

"... not that I'd actually suggest it... but yes. Like a cartoon mouse."

Hotaru tittered from the darkness. "Nemesis says the same thing."

"You know what I was thinking?"

"It's not hard. We – I know what you're thinking. It's not so much that I know, you understand, but that I remember."

"No one else seems to remember this has happened before. Well, almost no one. I would expect no one to know."

Again, Hotaru gave a girlish twitter from the shadows. "But you didn't talk to the others when you came back. You didn't talk to me, either. But you talked... to someone."

"To who? It had to be someone who I would have trusted."

"Not that you trusted; quite the opposite. But he has a way of sweeping women along with him." Hotaru gave a satisfied sigh. "He was... really good. I loved him, you know."

"Ranma Saotome."

"Bingo." Hotaru giggled.

"Why won't you come out of the dark to talk to me? And you're here, in front of me." Hotaru's frame didn't move in the slightest, then Setsuna saw the body draw and release a single breath. "What is this? What's going on?"

"Ahh Setsuna, now you know how we girls felt when you wouldn't tell us everything. It's your turn now. But trust me." Hotaru's voice grew serious and firm. "It will be all right this time. We were nearly there before, and the last you to travel in time told me that."

"This sounds like time is breaking. You shouldn't be able to do that. You shouldn't be able to repeat the same event over and over, changing it slightly. This isn't a time loop; causality wouldn't allow it." Setsuna grew sceptical now, folding her arms and frowning. "What you're all saying – it doesn't make sense! It can't happen! A timeline could change, but it doesn't allow one to go back and infinitely revise it."

"With the Time Gate on Pluto damaged, time has entered a flux. I think there is also an outside force acting on this. You told me back in my past that you had been told by me in your past that particular time was the eighth attempt you were aware of. An infinite loop, going back to the same point. That one day, almost a thousand years ago. Everything is relatively the same up until the point where you arrive on the island to stop Battle Royale, but you're too late. You're always a moment too late, just the wrong side of things."

"So... so what?" Setsuna turned around now, but the overhanging spotlight made it impossible to see anything beyond the cone of light. She stepped away from the bier, into the darkness, but found her eyes didn't adapt to it as they should have. She found it unsettling, and Setsuna heard laughter like a tinkle of chimes in a breeze. "Stop laughing. What is going on here? Why can't anyone give me a straight answer? Why do I always arrive too late?"

Hotaru's voice was sober again when she spoke, this time from a different part of the room. "The gate is locked to a set period. One thousand years exactly. You haven't been able to change that, never in any attempts to go back."

"Has... anyone tried activating the gate earlier than that point?"

The room was silent, too silent for about a minute. "I said –"

There was another voice in the room, a quick chuckle. Feminine, but rougher, coarser than Hotaru's voice. "Oh," said Hotaru quickly as the other voice stopped, "That is good. I don't think anyone has tried that before. This might be fun."

Standing in the darkness, Setsuna didn't see what brushed her cheek as something passed by, but then Hotaru's voice was on the other side of the room from where it had been previously. "Go. Tell Makoto your plan. She'll go along with it. Anything to break this cycle."

"What was the turning point?" Setsuna cried, realising she'd just been dismissed. "Everyone talks like there was a moment on this island – something where things went irretrievably wrong. What was that point?"

"No one told you?" Hotaru seemed aghast.

"No. Everyone acts like they're scared of me knowing what happened. They want me to change the past, but won't tell me what happened so I can change things!"

"It may be understandable," Hotaru said, in a quiet voice that faded away. "It was the awakening of Sailor Shiva. It damaged her. She killed someone and it broke her."

* * *

When Setsuna emerged from the corridor, she was deep in thought. Her mind raced through fevered plans, grabbing and discarding what she'd seen and heard these last few days. Makoto looked as if she was sulking, but Nemesis looked expectant. "Well?"

"I haven't done this before, but apparently, we all have."

"What?" Makoto seemed surprised.

"She told me once, way back when we were about to be captured during the war, that this was how things had gone last time. I didn't know what she meant at the time, but I've had a millennium to think about it." Nemesis took it in her stride. "I'm pretty sure this is what she meant. A time loop, right?"

Setsuna nodded. "That's right. And I've been reactive to this situation for far too long. I may not be Sailor Pluto right now, but that doesn't mean I don't know the same things or that I can't do what's right. Time is wrong, and as the Senshi of Time, it's high time I started bloody well acting like it. I haven't lived through this time. I haven't lived through this war. But guess what? We're not going to again. I'm going back in time, and I'm going to stop this." She paused and looked at Makoto and Nemesis. "But I'm not going to be able to stop this myself. I don't have access to my transformation at the moment? Fine. But there are two women here who do, and many more minor senshi. And there's Zentraedi and machinery as well. I want this gate dug up, now, and I want it powered, right after. I am then going back, and going to set this right. The only way you're going to stop me on this is if you kill me, right here and now."

Makoto stared, and Nemesis clapped with a grin. "Now, there's the Pluto I remember."

"Well?" Setsuna challenged Makoto.

"Well, nothing. It's dangerous, it's irresponsible, it will mean the death of every person on Mars once Earth finds out what's happening here." Makoto sighed before continuing. "But, we all know that anyway, and have since we first came here. This was your long term plan. Set up shop on Mars, wait for you to arrive, deliver you back and hope to hell you could change some critical moment that would short-circuit the war from taking place. I was wondering how long it would be before we saw you taking charge again." Makoto smiled. "The operation is yours."

Setsuna smiled.

* * *

A thousand years less six hours before, Chizuru staggered into sight of Chachamaru on the outskirts of Asuna's group's camp. She looked bruised and bloodied, especially around the face, and with a warning word from Chachamaru, Chisame and Ku Fei ran forward to grab her each under an arm to help the taller girl back into camp. Chisame looked askance at the blood and dirt rubbing off onto her shirt, but she otherwise ignored it for the moment. Ku struggled to keep Chizuru up on her side, owing to her shorter stature.

"Is needing help! Get Konoka!" Sakurako nodded and disappeared, returning with Konoka just before the girls got back to the camp site proper.

"What's happened? Oh!" Konoka raised her hand to her widening mouth in surprise. Setsuna, her friend and bodyguard, was only a step behind.

"What happened?" the swordswoman demanded of the injured woman.

Chizuru gasped, raspy sounds issuing from her throat. "Mana... came out of... nowhere. Magical girl, she warned... but were too slow. Ayaka is dead." She swallowed heavily. "Is Makie here?"

Setsuna gave a curt shake of her head in the negative. "No. And we haven't heard anything else moving in the forest around here, either." She glanced at Konoka. "Can you heal her?"

"I think so," Konoka said, before raising her hands slightly and announcing in a strict voice, "_Adeat_." Her clothes shifted and changed to her pactio's form, with fans held in her hand. She waved them slowly over Chizuru, whose wounds appeared to lessen, then heal. The blood remained caked on, though, which disturbed Chisame even more.

"Ugh," the net idol grunted, filing away the indignity for the mother of all blog posts.

"She should be fine," Konoka said, lowering her hands and fans. "But how did you get so injured?"

"Mana was chasing me... and then she... had me, was punching me, and then... then she must have heard something." Chizuru swallowed hard again. Her face seemed lined and pulled taut across her head, and Konoka thought she had to be stressed and tired, as well as still dealing with the effects of being so severely injured. "She fled into the trees, and I staggered off."

"That's horrible," Asuna said, from the back of the group that was now gathering around Chizuru.

Chizuru touched the sides of her face gently with her fingers, then ran one hand around so it rested under her chin and the other up until it reached her forehead, just under her hair line. "That's amazing, Konoka. I didn't know you could do that. It's almost like –"

"Magic, right?" laughed Konoka as she deactivated her pactio transformation. "That's one way to think about it." At Setsuna's glance, she shrugged and smiled. "I'm not going to worry about what's on television if it can help my friends."

"Television! That's it!" Chisame shouted, before offloading Chizuru to Asuna and hurrying to her bag. She quickly unloaded her laptop and powered it up, jumping to a search engine and hurriedly looking through sites. "What did that... that fairy say this was called? Battle Royale?"

"The announcer called it that in the class room as well," Sayo helpfully added.

"I wasn't thinking them so well," Chisame replied as she clicked on links in her web browser.

"Who are you talking to?" Asuna asked.

"Never mind that, look at this," Chisame said, leading back away from the laptop's monitor. The others crowded in to look, with Chizuru at the back of the group, and only Chachamaru behind her. Chizuru looked around.

"Where's Evangeline?"

"The Master is not here at present. She is off, surveying the island for materials." Chachamaru continued to keep watch, not turning around.

By this time, the group had brought up the Battle Royale website, and were checking the feeds on the island. "There's a camera around here," Asuna said, glancing around behind them in the direction one feed seemed to be coming from.

"There's cameras everywhere," Chisame replied, shrugging. "This whole island is one big voyeur's wet dream. Reality television taken to the nth degree."

"Hey, click on that," Sakurako suggested, pointing at a link marked Archive. There were a number of options once Chisame clicked on the link, broken up into defined time segments, such as last half-hour, last hour, last day and so on. "I wonder if Chizuru's attack is in here? We might find out what happened to Makie. Maybe she's still alive."

"Maybe," said Chisame doubtfully , but she clicked on the last hour link regardless. Once in, she clicked on Attacks, and waited for the page to load.

* * *

"We don't want them finding out too much," Big Man directed, pointing at several technicians. "This is gonna be great television. Edit what they see. You know what I mean."

In the background, on his cot, Negi cried under his blankets.

* * *

"Here's Chizuru's attack," Chisame announced, and waited for the video to stream from the site. After a few moments of buffering, it started, showing Chizuru running along a grassy track before a brown blur crossed the camera behind her, then again heading in the other direction.

"She's checking to see if anyone's around," Asuna observed.

A moment later, Mana flashed into view again, throwing a trio of sticks at Chizuru's feet which tripped her and brought her heavily to the ground. Chizuru bounced slightly, but started scrambling 

to her feet in a mad panic, but then Mana was on top of her, punching, slicing with stiff fingers, then jabbed a pair of fingers deep into Chizuru's throat. Behind the girls, Chizuru put a hand to her throat unconsciously and rubbed as is removing a painful memory. On the screen, Mana's head snapped up and looked to her right, before launching herself again into the undergrowth.

After half a minute, Chizuru staggered to her feet, and began limping along the path again, but before the girls could see anything else that was going on, the site crashed and the streaming video feed stopped.

"What?" Chisame complained loudly. "What the hell was that? Not good enough that I've got excellent wireless access and an eternal battery on a hell-hole like this, now they gotta take our only weapon away from us as well?"

"Not our only weapon," Asuna grinned, glancing at Setsuna and Chachamaru. "We've got others."

Chisame gave Asuna a withering look. "Well, for those of us not ninjas, magical girls or killer robots from parallel dimensions, we just lost our only weapon. All I've got other than this and a swimsuit is," she dug around in her bag for a few moments before pulling out and holding up her makeup pencil, "this. Oh, this makes me feel real secure."

"Hide under bangs and glasses like always!" Ku announced with a decisive nod.

"That'll work well," Chisame sniffed.

"Is your web access down completely, or is it just the Battle Royale site?" Chachamaru asked from her position on lookout.

Chisame snapped her fingers. "Of course! I'm an idiot. It's just..." she typed rapidly, her fingers flying across the laptop's keyboard, multiple browser windows opening across the monitor as she typed new terms into search fields. "I'm sure someone has up-to-date fan sites or blogs talking about the show. I'm sure we could find out the most recent information from that. They won't kill the TV feed."

"Is it possible to watch TV on that thing?" Asuna asked.

"No. I don't have the equipment in it to do that. No aerial, either, although the surprising wireless capability on this island surprises me no end." Chisame gave a distracted shrug. "This might take some time, though."

Asuna saw Chizuru was in her element, and left her to it. "Ku, keep an eye on her. The rest of you all," she raised her voice slightly to take in everyone else. "You're all going to sleep. No arguments. We'll stand watch as normal. Keep an eye and an ear out for Makie, any of the others, and especially for Mana and Zazie. Kaede'll be keeping an eye out for both of them also, but there are more of us here now than out there – in fact, I'd say very survivor aside from those two are now here – so it's really important we stay alive long enough for the... fairy, that forest fairy thing, to save us."

* * *

Big Man stroked his chin with his thumb. He could see television gold coming now. Demegawa's show would not beat Battle Royale, no way, not with this shocker.

Thanks to his production staff, he'd managed to pull the live feed of the shows on the internet, as well as the appropriate archival footage removed from the site. He'd also made a passionate plea to fan sites and bloggers to remove reference to the events of earlier in the day, so as to make for more suspenseful television. Would the girls realise one amongst them was a demon in disguise?

He glanced over at where Negi was, with his ermine companion and the stuffed doll that had appeared from nowhere. If he didn't know better, he'd say the animal and stuffed toy were trying to console the teacher. Well, he could try and console them as much as he wanted. Last round, the teacher was going out in the field to face off against the surviving student in the true finale to Battle Royale.

But for the moment, there was drama better than he could have conceived to come. Big Man looked down at the series of still images next to his hand and smiled. The images showed Mana returning to batter Chizuru down, then pausing in a moment of contemplation before carefully and deliberately cutting around the very edge of Chizuru's face and hairline and beginning the process of carefully removing her face and scalp.

* * *

Houston, the former United States of America, a thousand years from now.

Buried under a kilometre of earth, rock and buildings as well as more technological and magical forms of defence lay a bunker. It was a simple affair, although getting into it was anything but. A series of rooms, all joined by a central corridor. Only half a dozen people lived in this facility at any one time, and two people were on duty at all times. It wasn't a friendly structure – signage and exposed supports and piping prevented it from being that – but it had a homey quality to those who spent a year-long tour locked in the structure.

The bunker was designed for one purpose, and one purpose only: locating and tracking senshi.

The most excitement they had received in years was only a few days ago, when someone registered on the heuristic nets as asking too many questions and knowing far, far too much for her own good at the Crystal Tokyo memorial, but there had been a Meltrandi there, and with the Meltrandi, the woman had escaped the attentions of the Evangelions tasked to capture or kill the senshi.

The building was tied into every detection net on and off the planet, and as there was quite a lot of the systems tied in together into several medium-sized consoles, it wasn't always immediately apparent what alarm was going off when one did.

However, the Lunar Farside Giant Optical Array had its own special alarm, and when that started clamouring for attention in the command centre, the two officers on duty started and spun around to the giant wall screen behind them next to the door. The others woke or roused themselves from rest activities fairly quickly and skidded into the room moments later while the observatory was still zooming in on something.

"What's going on?" one officer asked.

"The GOA went off. It's seen something."

"David?"

"Not sure yet, Xian. Still zooming." A red dot appeared in the middle of the image. "Mars?"

"Or one of the moons," Xian suggested, but as the image grew larger, it became apparent that the planet was the target of the GOA's alarm. "No, Mars. What's there?"

The other duty officer was digging through screens of information. "GOA was partially tasked to observe some Zentraedi settlers who were living in an old UAC based. Abandoned after an otherdimensional incursion in C22, but... no information on who, if anyone, owns it now. Full-size Zentraedi were observed digging nearby this last week, but no heavy machinery was being used and they were going slow."

"Thanks, Michel. So why the alarm?"

"GOA is suggesting machinery now involved," David reported, reading scrolling text surrounding the image of Mars, now zooming in on a cratered canyon area, before focussing in on an area on the highlands away from what looked to be the UAC facility built into the side of the canyon wall. As the view continued to zoom, they could see a large crater, many Zentraedi standing around, and machinery digging. Something was also in the crater, which the GOA's view couldn't identify but looked like ancient, blasted rock in a monolithic configuration. "What's that?"

"Never mind that," Xian said, pointing at a series of dots down near the base of the crater. "What's that? And why are the Zentraedi evacuating the crater? They've been hand-digging it, so... wait." Xian reached a finger out, and traced a box around one of the moving dots. The GOA obligingly zoomed in further, and revealed a person, a woman, standing in the pit with her hands raised.

"Who is that?" David asked, wonderingly. "She's beautiful."

The woman snapped her fingers, and hell and ribbons exploded light seconds away. The GOA footage blanked out and the words _no signal_ blinked in the middle of the screen.

"She's a senshi!"

"I think they're all senshi! Alert Command! Let them know what's going on!" Xian leapt for a wall comm, already babbling out a rapid report to the AI on the other end.

* * *

"They'll be on their way now," Sailor Jupiter commented. "We'd better make this fast."

Setsuna snapped her fingers; annoyingly nothing happened. "This just isn't any fun."

"You'll be able to do it when you have to," Jupiter replied, before turning back to the assembled minor senshi. "We have no time now. We need this dug out, powered up and activated in as short a time as possible. Everyone understand their role? Defence, go active as soon as we get the first reports of –"

"Valkyries in the sky!" yelled someone from the lip of the crater.

"This is it," Jupiter grinned, happy to release her power once more. "Everyone! You know your tasks! Good luck, and we'll see you in a better world!"

TO BE CONTINUED..

SAILOR MOON SAYS: Well, now we're at the pointy end of the mid-series stick. Battle Royale is almost over, and Pluto will be joining the main cast shortly as well, as seems fairly obvious by now. Hope you're all still enjoying it... the creepiness factor will be dialled back once the TV show has concluded and the girls go on to be what they always wanted to be (and always were, to a degree)... highly moralistic superheroes.

And yes, Usagi gets her giant robot.

There's more to come, so please stick around!

Next time: the end of the beginning. The final showdowns of this part of the arc commence. Ceres vs Zazie. Everyone else vs Mana. Jupiter, Chao, Nemesis and a few others against the combined forces of Earth, out to wipe the last remnants of Usagi's army from the universe!


	16. Chapter 16

**DISCLAIMER:** Relatively standard stuff. Existing characters are properties of the people who made them up. Mitsuki, and several other characters are mine, and so's the story, hence ownership and copyright of them belongs to me. Contact me at my usual email address if you want permission to use anything I've written for whatever purposes. As per usual, I'm having even approved formatting ripped out on upload, and now having line breaks introduced for no apparent reason. I apologise in advance for any formatting errors you may meet.

**Justice**

By

Raymond Cooper

The End of Worlds

Fifty Valkyries fitted out with integrated fold drives warped into existence fifty kilometres above the surface of Mars, part of a combat aerospace patrol that had been out near Pluto moments before, and banked, screaming into the atmosphere. Superheat plasma with the appearance of fire licked around from their undersides, and the squadron leader keyed a channel back to Earth. The fold crystal utilised in his communications gear carried his words back to Earth instantaneously. "Gold One to Megaroad twelve-twenty, we're beginning our descent."

"Authority to use reaction weapons has been given," came the feminine reply from the blue planet millions of kilometres away. "Good hunting, Gold Squadron. You'll have backup shortly. Skull and Bones Squadrons are inbound to your location."

"Roger that," Gold One replied, before toggling his comms over to squad frequencies. "Listen up. We're going in hard and fast. Reaction weapons have been authorised. I don't want any prisoners taken; just turn the planet into pavement."

A chorus of affirmatives came back from the other forty-nine planes. They passed the twenty kilometre mark.

A blue plasma blast sailed lazily between two of his planes, and Gold One smiled grimly. This was going to be easy. It was well over a century since the last major combat operations against any senshi, there was no way they were going to be combat effective. Several more plasma streams passed by.

"Colonel?" came a rookie's nervous voice over the comms.

"Relax," Gold One replied, "this is light, scattered fire. We're in no danger. Shift your flight paths to optimise your avoidance."

More plasma streamed up, and the Valkyries shifted to avoid them.

Ten kilometres out, the first high energy wave struck, dismantling three Valkyries in a second as it expanded outward. The squadron commander turned in his seat as far as he could to look back over his shoulder. That wasn't right. They didn't have any indication of such accurate, heavy fire on the way down, and no information on this capability in the remaining senshi from Earth. Another four planes lit up on the other side of his, and he scrambled his fingers for missile release commands. "All planes, all planes! We are coming under heavy fire. You are go for reaction weapons!" The buttons felt too small under his thick gloves, but Gold One managed to key in the firing authorisation sequence. His Valkyrie shuddered as the four armed warheads launched from his wings, dropping below towards the surface faster than he could. Out of the corner of his eye, he also saw another dozen fighters drop their payload, moments before half of them were destroyed.

Several reaction warheads also detonated in the explosions, but more were on their way to the surface of Mars, to this crater his forces had been directed to. Seconds later, Gold One saw explosions dot the landscape of Mars as the reaction weapons hit home.

He died a second later, still feeling triumphant from completing his mission, as a third energy wave eradicated his plane and two others.

* * *

"Good shooting," Sailor Jupiter congratulated Nemesis. She turned her attention to four of the minor senshi standing nearby, Charon among them. All were sweating. "You did good, girls. Keep those reaction weapons off us and the base." She returned her attention to the gathering of Zentraedi behind her, still in the crater. "Dig. Dig like there's no tomorrow. Use machinery. Grab some of the minors if you need help and think blowing the gate out of the ground would be the better way to go. I'm not sure. I'll leave the digging to you. We'll otherwise keep them off your back."

"Right," came the loud, deep voice of a Meltrandi.

"Chao, stay with Setsuna. When the gate is uncovered, I want you to power it up, activate it and go through. This whole show is to get you both back in time. If we fail in that, then there's no hope for anything. Understood?"

Setsuna nodded agreement. Chao looked unimpressed. "I can fight. I can fight as well as any of you. Magic and a giant go well together."

"I need you to protect Setsuna. She's not got her powers back yet. I don't know why. Maybe it has something to do with the past – our past – but I don't know. Just keep her safe."

"Understood," Chao sighed, rolling her eyes. She glanced at Setsuna. "We should think about taking cover somewhere, then."

"Where would you suggest?"

"There's a small bunker nearby. I think there. It's well within the defence perimeter and is also close to the gate for when it's uncovered."

Setsuna nodded. "Lead on." She gave a concerned look back at Jupiter, who smiled.

"We're not little kids anymore, Setsuna," Jupiter reassured her. "We've done this before. We can do it again. We'll hold out long enough, don't worry."

It was that thought that troubled Setsuna as she followed the smaller Meltrandi to safety. At what cost would they hold out?

"We've got reports coming in from Earth, transports are mobilising. Expect Evangelions here in six hours."

"They'll have some here before then," Jupiter replied. "There will be some ready to go. They'll fold as soon as they've off the ground. Expect tougher resistance in the next hour or so."

"We can handle Evangelions," Nemesis replied confidently, balling her right hand into a fist. "They're not so tough."

"For you and I, maybe. The minors? A little tougher. And it's more the numbers."

A sudden thought occurred to Nemesis. "What if they field the Lance of Longinus?"

"I'm expecting that and Unit-01 will be released before this battle is over," Jupiter said, worry crossing her face like a brief sun shower on a summer's day.

"Valkyries inbound!" yelled a minor senshi from a few hundred metres away. "Battleship Ikari moving into orbit above us!"

Nemesis gave Jupiter a glance. "Which fun do you want?"

"I'm better at multiple fast-moving targets and you know it," Jupiter scowled. "You handle the battleship."

Nemesis grabbed power from her core, and threw her hands up in the air. "Cometary Impactor!" A bright blue globe, two dozen metres across and licking arcane energies out like a miniature sun, erupted from her palms and shot upwards.

* * *

On the bridge of the Ikari, the crew completed post-fold checklists, and readied for firing. One of the sensor techs half-turned to his captain. "Captain! I'm detecting a high energy pulse on the surface!"

"Hard to starboard, up forty degrees! Full engines!" the captain snapped.

"The spine won't take that kind of manoeuvre!" the XO called from the other side of the bridge, turning in time to see the energy readings heading towards orbit, then grabbed the back of a gunnery position's chair to brace himself.

Sure enough, the ship groaned, vibrations growing intensely through the decking under their feet. Consoles shook and rattled, and the giant rounded blade-shaped ship began moving.

But not fast enough. Sailor Nemesis' attack caught them amidships, bursting through their side armour and blasting out through the other side. Broadsided, the ship tore itself in half before erupting into two huge fireballs, killing all aboard.

* * *

"They should think twice now about establishing a low orbit," Jupiter said with a tight but unhappy smile while she blasted incoming Valkyries from the skies.

Nemesis turned back from one of the minor senshi. "We're getting reports of a Gundam container ship approaching from the other side of Mars," Nemesis said. "They're expected to deliver their cargo from off the horizon shortly. We won't be able to get them from here."

"We'll wait for them to come to us," Jupiter replied. "Don't worry Kari, we'll get through this."

"I know," Nemesis replied. "I just wish it wasn't just us fighting. Ranma and Hotaru should be here as well." She sounded distant, melancholy.

"Don't give into despair," Jupiter came back with a smile. "We're not done yet. We're the last hope for Crystal Tokyo to come about. A real one, not the fake that we all fought for previously." She sighed, and her eyes unfocussed as she looked off into a parallel time. "It always sounded so beautiful when I was a kid, this perfect place where no one wanted for anything and everyone was safe and loved and fitted in."

"You're not so tall now," Nemesis countered. "But I worry about Shiva. I worry about Ganymede. I worry about them all. We've had a thousand years to know things went wrong. The minors, they didn't get the stories you had. They didn't have the hopes I had. It was the twenty-first century, and all they knew was war."

Jupiter rested a hand on Nemesis' shoulder. "Don't worry about it so much. Things will be made right. Things will be made better. You'll see."

"Well, if everything goes right, I won't," Nemesis returned with a sad smile. "All our work... all our effort... and no one will remember it."

Jupiter looked up, where she could see fold signatures flowering high above the planet. "Two people will remember it. And make sure the memory is not forgotten. That's different than if Earth invaded us without this plan. Then, and only then, would no one remember what we had fought for and any hope for the future would truly die."

* * *

The dark assassin Ceres had been trying to track had disappeared, but almost all of the other surviving girls had made it to Asuna's camp by now. That was good, Sailor Ceres reflected, thanking whatever gods might be listening mentally. Wherever Mana was, she wasn't causing trouble for the class. However, Zazie had also disappeared, and someone of that power level vanishing wasn't something Ceres liked. It was safe to say she was up to no good, and that didn't bode well for the immediate future.

"Hopefully they're both fighting each other," Hotaru said from where she was mounted on Ceres' wrist. "That would be at least two problems taken care of."

"I keep getting a whiff of Mana, though, but very faint," Ceres admitted. "Just... not enough strength to get a firm location or direction." She glanced down at the small girl who had replaced her right hand. "Could you, you know, appear on her wrist? Give us some idea of where she is?"

"Nope," Hotaru replied. "I could only do it with you because of my feelings, sempai. Only because I love you so much!"

Ceres blushed, then looked annoyed she was blushing. "You could have left that at 'no', you realise." Hotaru giggled.

"But I haven't said it in soooo long, and besides, it's fun to see you blush." Hotaru looked a little downcast after she spoke, though, and gave a sad sigh. "I guess I can't be as much help you as I thought, then."

"It's simply good to have you here," Ceres replied, seriously.

"Sailor Ceres – I have to ask you, what is going on outside of here? Why are you doing this?"

"I'm trying to save thirty innocent girls," Ceres gave an evasive answer, eyes flicking to the side.

Hotaru got back in her face. "No, Ceres, why are you sided with Yoshihiro? I, I believe in you, but I need to know for sure. I want to make sure I won't be betraying my friends for..."

"I can't explain it. No more than I already have, at least." Ceres sighed, and tried to put into words her thoughts. "Sailor Moon, she's lost it. She doesn't realise it yet, but she's lost it. She thinks she knows better than everyone – and she doesn't. I saw that at the university, but didn't realise it, and I saw it when we were trapped in the System, but had other things on my mind at the time. She's a kid, making a grown-up decision without thinking about it. She's a kid inside. Unconditional love? It's all great until you realise that love that strong and complete and powerful needs permission, especially the type she has where she's making a decision for everyone. If you try and push it on someone else, it's... it's..."

Hotaru supplied a word when she saw Ceres struggling. "Rape?"

"Exactly. If she pushes her beliefs and love on the world, the world will resent it, reject it – and things will be bad. A hundred years from now, humans will make that choice on their own ta follow her and accept her, and from what ya told me before, that's how things are supposed ta happen. But she's pushin' for it now. She's trying to make the world as she thinks it should without asking what the world thinks of it."

"If," Hotaru posed, "you knew someone had a weapon, a powerful weapon, and you had the strength to remove it, wouldn't you? Wouldn't you get rid of that weapon and make the world a safer place?"

Ceres nodded. "That's different, though. Removing the weapon, takin' out who built it – that's one thing. Forcibly remaking the minds of everyone in that country so they wouldn't pose a threat to ya again? That's another thing. And that's what she's wanting to do. She's a kid, Hotaru, and until she grows up, and accepts responsibility for what she does, accepts there can be consequences, and waits until it's what everyone wants... while I was in the System, I had some... views of the future. I saw Crystal Tokyo as a beautiful place where only beautiful people were allowed, and it shielded the beautiful people from the ones outside, still affected by Usagi's war on humanity. When I was dead, I saw a lot of things, also. Ways the world could end, and how in all of them, the end was averted by Sailor Moon and people turning to her for help themselves, of their own volition, for what they hoped and thought was a better way. But what she's doing now, what's she's doin' is wrong. She's not waiting to be asked, she's going to do it now, and she's not gonna care who gets hurt."

"This is why you're helping Yoshihiro?"

"There's also somethin' about him. Somethin' wrong. He's not supposed ta be like this. He's... it's hard to explain." Ceres shook her head to clear her confusion. "He's stuck. He's not sure if he's wanting to do this, or if he's not wanting to do it at all. It's like he's waiting to be told what to do. His plans are all over the place. He could have taken us when we got out of the System, but he didn't. He's got the strength to take Tokyo – heck, take Japan – and get what he wants, but he holds back. I used to think maybe he was led by rules, but I think it's indecision. He's doing this because he has to do this, he's got some drive, some... what's the word, compulsion to do this. But he doesn't want to do this. I saw him when I was dead as well, and he didn't know what to do. He agonises to himself when no one's around. And my lieutenants... they're unconventional and stuff, they want something from me. Something different. I think... I think he's sent them, and taken me, because I showed that we could do something different."

"Different?"

"When I said I'd join with him. He was expecting a fight at my funeral, Hotaru. He was expecting me to challenge him to a fight. But I wasn't ready to do that. I probably still aren't in his power level, even if I combined every bit o' power I've now got. I couldn't match Sailor Moon if she went all out, and he'd give her a run for her money. But... he was expecting a fight, and I didn't give him one. He's expecting me to sabotage his plans, and so far I've been valuable, shown him a way he can do what he wants without killing or hurting people. His Generals are all set against one another vying for position and prestige, and I'm proposing something new. No one ever tells him anything new. No one ever tells him anything they think he doesn't want to hear."

Hotaru wondered aloud. "Was that why he didn't come immediately after Natsumi when she defected?"

"Probably. He went back and got her when he needed her knowledge of computers and virtual worlds, and he probably knows I talk to her when no one else is around, and might even know she helps me see things. But he doesn't say anything, doesn't do anything about it. He's... watching me. Not closely enough to know I'm here, I'm sure, and he doesn't know I'm Sailor Ceres," Ceres chuckled and posed with her left hand on her hip. "People find it hard enough accepting I can be a woman. Combine that with being a senshi and you gotta know, most people would think that's impossible."

"You always were impossible," Hotaru tittered before growing serious. "I didn't get that from him. I got the dark, evil man who wanted to twist and hurt the world."

"You got him pumping out his power to impress you, Hotaru," Ceres replied. "His power isn't like mine. It's not tempered with ki, with whatever makes me a senshi as well, but purely Dark Moon Kingdom energy. To you, being only a senshi, it's like pure evil. To me, it's... different."

"He smells like roses."

"Beautiful, exquisite, with hidden thorns to stab you when you stop to admire it."

"I didn't think of roses that way before," Hotaru said, "but I probably will from now on. Gee, thanks."

"I'm sorry."

Hotaru waved the apology off. "Never mind. But... okay. What are we doing now?"

Ceres looked around them, at the trees, grass, hills in the distance. Everything was eerily quiet. Even the small breeze making the grass and leaves on trees wave was silent, and there was no bird sound anywhere. "There are two girls on this island who could pose a real threat. Mana, and that Zazie girl. Mana can be handled by that ninja, Kaede, and the others. They're competent fighters, so long as they don't let their guard down they'll be fine."

"Mana doesn't attack head on."

"No, she relies on stealth and surprise a lot. But the girls are keeping an eye out. If anything approaches their camp, they'll know all about it and be able to stop her. No, the one that really worries me is this Zazie. She was incredibly strong last time. I can match her, beat her – but doing so might announce my presence to Umiko."

"Why are you worried about her finding out you're here?" Hotaru queried.

"Because," Ceres explained patiently, "Umiko hates me, thinks I'm trying to take over and ruin things between her and the Master, and she's likely to land here with all of her forces. They would slaughter anyone and everyone they could find. I wouldn't be able to stop them in time, and that kind of fighting would put an end to me trying to show Yoshihiro there is another way of doing things. It's hard, because I would have to get involved, even if it's the absolute wrong thing to do in terms of ultimately doing good."

Hotaru giggled again, hiding her mouth behind her hand. "What's so funny?" Ceres demanded.

"You, it's just you. Who could have pictured you tip-toeing around and being careful?"

Sailor Ceres chuckled self-consciously at the sudden thought, a hand finding its way behind her head. "How careful was I with you guys? Not letting anyone know what I knew until it wasn't important anymore. Training you. I think what I did is helping you now. I dunno how, but that's what I think."

"Yes, you are helping," Hotaru confirmed. "I can't say what yet, but we're going to fight back."

"Why Hotaru, do you not trust me?"

"Paragon of virtue and honesty, hell no," Hotaru laughed. "How would you be able to fight her properly if you can't power up properly?"

"I think that robot girl gave us the best information yet," Ceres replied, taking to the skies again and looking downwards, looking for signs of either Zazie or Mana. "Sever this chain of fate thing, slice her mask in two. Maybe if I could go all-out –"

"Sailor Ceres, am I stopping you from fighting like this?"

It was a loaded question, and it stopped Ceres in mid-air, before allowing herself to sink to the ground in a wooded area. "That's..."

"Is it the truth? Tell me that much."

"It is... kinda. I'm used to fighting with both hands, both feet. I feel, with you here, I have to tie one hand behind my back. I don't wanna get you hurt."

Hotaru put her hands where her hips would be and glared at Ceres. "I'm strong! I can take it!"

"Maybe you can, but I just don't wanna get you hurt in any way if I can help it."

"If I went back... if I could go back... would you be able to stop Zazie without powering up further?"

"I dunno, Hotaru. It's difficult. She's strong. Really strong."

"I'm really strong. I'm Sailor Saturn!"

Ceres gave a light giggle before guiltily looking around to make sure no one was about. When she returned her attention to the little girl attached to her wrist, she said, "I know you are, and you're beautiful, but this is somethin' that... it's not like you're Sailor Saturn. It's like you're this small, precious thing. My precious. And I wanna protect you even more when you're here like this."

"I handicap you, in other words," Hotaru replied, looking away and a little disheartened. When it looked like Ceres was going to jump in with a response, she added, "I know what you mean. Small, fragile – more than normal. It's... understandable. But I don't have to like it."

Behind them, something moved, and there was a sudden stir of power. Sailor Ceres spun around, and found Zazie standing there, hands loosely at her sides. There was no sword in evidence yet, but there was no cloak of darkness around her shoulders, either. She had a small smile on her face, and a slightly excited expression to match it.

There were no Menos around her this time, Ceres noted, her eyes flicking around the immediate vicinity to take in what the terrain was like. Surely, if this girl was calling them out here, she was either supremely confident of victory – understandable considering their last bout – or she knew the layout very well and there was something that could give her an advantage. Seeing as she couldn't see anything here that would give her concern as a senshi, Ceres settled for the former option. "This is gonna be bad, Hotaru. I can go harder and faster, but you're a handicap."

"I don't have to be, Sailor Ceres," Hotaru said, before transforming on the end of Ceres' forearm into her abbreviated Sailor Saturn outfit. "She's not facing just one senshi now. She's facing two. We might be joined at the hip –"

"- So to speak –" interjected Ceres, eyeing her wrist.

"- but we're still more than a match for something that goes bump in the night," Chibi-Saturn replied. Ceres saw she had a determined expression on her face, fists balled, ready to fight dirty and physically if need be. Ceres smiled, feeling strangely giddy inside at the sight.

"You're right, Sailor Saturn. We can do this." Ceres looked up at Zazie, and nodded. "We're ready whenever you are."

Zazie gave a small, mysterious smile, and threw her right arm out to the side, drawing her cloak of darkness with it. A moment later, she dropped her bone mask down over her face with her left hand as she drew her blade with her right. As in their last fight, she flickered into high-speed motion, and the fight was on.

* * *

"Something's going on with the other katana girl," a production assistant called out from the other side of the classroom, peering at a bank of monitors. Big Man turned around in his fold-out director's chair.

"Which one? The pale one or the creepy one?"

"They're both pale and creepy," another assistant muttered.

"It's the one with the black cape and the mask that looks like she's pulled it off a dead animal."

"The creepy one, then," Big Man said, standing and walking over to the monitors and bending over to get a better view. "Is she fighting that forest fairy thing?"

"It looks like it. But she's striking at something just to the left of the fairy, I think."

"What do you mean?"

The assistant pointed to the right of the fairy in the view they had, from behind Zazie and facing the fairy. "She's striking here. And it looks like she's hitting something."

"Maybe she's just a very bad shot," someone else pointed out.

"No," Big Man said, scratching his chin thoughtfully. "He's right. It's like she's attacking something there. Look. This monitor, and this one, and this one. She's aiming at something. Looking at something, and it's not the fairy."

"That's impossible."

The first assistant spoke up again. "I'm seeing lots of impossible things on these screens. I've seen a robot girl have an arm cut off and that sword buried in her chest, and she's walking around as if nothing had happened held together by duct tape. We've seen a fairy. An honest-to-god fairy, flitting about the forest. We've taken one of Japan's top net idols. We've seen the bondage fairy or vampire or whatever you want to call her. Magic, ninjas, robots and a bazooka made out of coconuts _on an island without coconuts_, this is no ordinary classroom. Why is it impossible to believe there's an invisible person on the island?"

"Wait," one of the women in the team said, going back to her table and rifling through some papers. A soldier nearby gave her a disinterested glance before turning his attention back to Negi at the back of the room, his back to everyone, his arms moving in small, controlled movements. The soldier had been thinking of going over for a while to see what the teacher was doing, but there was an ermine watching him, with what seemed to be an odd smirk on its face, and there was also that damned creepy doll watching him. Why the kid kept it, he had no idea. He was fairly sure it wasn't the teacher's, but he held onto it like it had some great importance. Maybe it was one a doll of his students? The woman found what she was looking for and held it up triumphantly, attracting his gaze again. She wasn't unattractive, and, more importantly on this mostly male-populated school, she bounced when she moved enthusiastically.

It was good to see her happy again.

"Here!" she cried, heading back into the tight knot of people. "You said an invisible person, right? That ghost the idol keeps talking to. Perhaps it's her? Remember," she added to Big Man, "she keeps calling her by the name of the person you called out on the first night but didn't arrive? Maybe she's that ghost! The robot girl mentioned a shinigami when she arrived before. A death god of some kind? Here to take the ghost back to the spirit world?"

Big Man snorted. "How do you sell that on television?"

"Special effects," someone else added. "No, seriously, we just insert some glowing or misty thing in there, and then insert it around Chiu... Chisame back at the camp later and give a voiceover by a psychic, '_this is definitely a spirit that doesn't want to go away_' or something. Public'll eat it up. Remember Professor Ueda's interviews? The public want to believe. Anything that's better than their reality. And this show is already surreal."

"Except... correct me if I'm wrong," the first assistant interrupted, "not saying it's a bad idea, but Chisame is talking to her ghost back with the others now. Whatever's going on there, it's not the ghost."

"Then... what is it?" Big Man asked.

The assistant shrugged. "If I knew, I'd be making more money than I am now by selling my psychic knowledge to television rather than working as a glorified live editor."

Big Man snorted. "We'll go with the haunted island story. One of the girls who's already dead. One of the twins, maybe. Back from the grave to defend her friends! Or get revenge on them for killing her."

"We killed them both," the woman reminded him.

"The first killed herself, the second was killed by someone else. It wasn't us."

* * *

On his stretcher, his back to the room, Negi whittled. His new wand was almost ready - at least he hoped it was. Aside from the fact this wood came from a doll that Evangeline had sent to him, he had no real indication this would be a definite wand with magical power. It felt... wrong to him. Unmagical, somehow. He just wasn't sure.

Almost finished now. Only a few more strokes, and he would be ready. But what was he going to do? Was he going to blow magic wide open to the world on live television? He'd be stuck as an ermine for life if it happened. And yet, nothing had happened yet to the girls he'd performed pactios with – Asuna and Nodoka and Setsuna and Konoka. They had used their abilities already on television, and nothing had happened to them. Likewise, Mana and Kaede displayed skills far beyond what people normally thought of martial artists, and Evangeline had not only activated her glamour on television, she had attacked the school with the intention (he hoped) of retrieving Negi before leaving the island.

Nothing had happened to any of them. In fact, Evangeline was back on the island. Negi guessed that meant the rules were out the door – use of magic was going to be approved after the fact, if it hadn't already been approved. That had to be why Negi had the wand smuggled to him, and what Evangeline was planning. But what was going on with the others? Why were they fighting one another? What were Mana and Zazie doing?

Well, another few strokes, and he'd be finished. Be ready to fight his way out past a dozen soldiers inside, and who knew how many outside? As well as the production staff, but he was pretty sure he was going to be able to do it – at the very least, the production staff would be little threat to him in terms of combat.

But this was a few minutes away, and Negi found himself wishing this last moment of peace and relative innocence would stretch out forever and never end, because when it eventually did, he'd never be the same again.

* * *

"And you say she killed Hina Ichigo?" Usagi asked with wide-open eyes.

"Not killed, broke," Ami corrected as the senshi, Luna and Artemis stood around in a circle outside the dorm. The afternoon sun was hot, and there was a strange sub-audible hum that set their teeth on edge. "Hotaru – Sailor Saturn, I think – threw her through a wall."

"Wow. I wish I'd been there to see that," Usagi breathed. "They keep trying to kill me."

"It's not like that," Rei corrected. "You just seem to be in the way of their games."

Usagi gave Rei a serious glaring, hands on her hips and leaning forward. "Don't you tell me they're just playing games, Rei. They've tried to electrocute me, drown me, and brained me with a pile of bricks amongst other things."

"Well then," Rei added again, spitefully, "maybe they're just not very good at killing people."

"All right, you two," Makoto interjected, taking the role of the peacemaker. "Calm down. Rei, you were telling me before you had some concerns yourself. But Ami, what you're saying – Sailor Saturn? Had Hotaru transformed?"

Ami shook her head. "No. But she was just... incredibly strong. Bursting with power. And she was cold."

"It's summer, though," Usagi said, looking confused as she glanced in the direction of the afternoon sun. "And pretty warm."

Ami ignored her. "Just... can any of you remember your past lives? Properly, I mean. Not the whole thing, just... parts of it." Several of the girls nodded.

"You mean more than just 'oh, we're superheroes and soldiers', right?" Minako asked. "Like, conversations, things we did, that kind of thing?"

"Things that our past selves did, yes," Ami corrected. "It's hard to remember, but they weren't us. And I don't know if they were reborn, or if they are almost like a separate part of us. Another reality able to overwrite ours, a reality of memory. It would make a lot of sense about our abilities if that were the case."

"Like a... beneficial parasite or something," Makoto said out loud before realising she had done so and blushing.

"Exactly. Something like that. A memory set and personalities that are managed by us. A power source from outside normal spacetime that allow us great abilities and the chance to peer through a doorway few ever would be able to. And if that is the case, and that... whatever it is, whatever you want to call it, a complete memory is in charge of Hotaru's body... the real Sailor Saturn, so to speak. Power unfettered by control or personality in a body that can't handle it."

"Hotaru has gotten stronger in the last year," Usagi began dubiously, but Ami interrupted.

"Not strong enough. I doubt any human body would be able to contain the power. Hotaru... Saturn... is in her room again, meditating. I can feel her through the house – the house is vibrating. Even the ground out here is humming in tune. I think she's taken her power output down as much as she can, but it's still considerable. It jumped greatly when Ichigo was thrown through the wall."

The senshi stayed silent for a minute, digesting that. "You mean, this is the real Sailor Saturn," Usagi said slowly. "If it is, think of the things we could find out from her. What my mother was like. What the Moon Kingdom was like."

"Surely this is a great problem," Luna reminded them. "If what Ami is saying is true, then the slightest lapse in concentration could cause Saturn to explode."

"I could remake everything," Usagi said confidently. "I did it before, when we left the System. Saturn blew everything up, I remade it."

"That was slightly different then," Minako remarked dryly. "We were all stuck in a computer game."

"It's no different," Usagi got annoyed, scowling at Minako. "And I think the rewards far outweigh the risks."

The other senshi looked at each other nervously before Artemis spoke up. "It's too dangerous. None of us want to be at ground zero for a possible nuclear explosion. Stay away from her."

"I don't have to," Usagi sulked.

"The real problem is the dolls. Are we sure they're evil?" Minako got the meeting back on track, ever the leader of the group.

"Yes."

"We know your stance, Usagi. Anyone else?"

"Well, well, well, former son-in-law is still surrounding himself with idiots," Cologne added her view.

"Yes, well, ARGH! Where did you come from?"

"Ears, Usagi, my ears."

"Sorry, Minako. But where did you come from?"

"Is it not time for training?"

"Oh." Realisation hit Usagi, and she gave a glance at the dorm. From her bedroom window, she could see the narrowed eyes of Suiseiseki watching the meeting with great interest. The girls all split up into training groups, running through warm-ups and some simple moves. Cologne tapped Usagi on the shoulder with her cane and stepped back.

"You will train with me today, girl." Usagi gave a nod, and the two began sparring – although it was more like the world's most awkward dance to observers, Usagi trying to seem suave and experienced, and the older woman managing to always just be out of reach but not seeming to move.

During a jab of Usagi's, Cologne whispered, "You're looking at a dark path."

"What do you mean?" Usagi asked as Cologne tapped her forehead.

"I mean, long ago, your people destroyed my village. It may have been for a good cause, but surely physical destruction achieves nothing but more hatred and conflict. You were just saying it would be all right to blow the city up to get what you want because you could fix it afterwards. That is a very dangerous path."

"I was joking," Usagi bit back, annoyed. "Can't anyone take a joke anymore?"

"You were serious, girl. You want to know, and you're not yet wise enough to make those kinds of decisions. You're a hundred years too young to be that compassionate."

"You're mocking me," Usagi grumbled as she feinted to the left before making a strike to the right. "I know what's good and evil."

"Knowing what is good and evil is different from just and unjust. For four thousand years, the people of my village have fought and trained to match the female warriors who devastated our home. For good or evil, this happened?"

"If it was a Dark Kingdom monster, it was for good."

"Except killing innocents? Destroying a village? To save the village, do you need to destroy the village?"

Usagi gave that some thought, biting back on her immediate reply that came to mind because she knew Cologne didn't want to hear a 'yes' answer. But still, she couldn't think of anything that she could say that was truthful to how she felt but still what Cologne wanted to hear. In the end, she couldn't think of anything, so she shrugged, preferring to remain silent for the moment.

"If you are who you claim to be, and who you think you are, then you need to find another way. If you're not, then you're on the right path." Cologne left her at that, moving on to Minako for some additional sparring and leaving Usagi with some thinking to do. She glanced upwards again, seeing Suiseiseki had been joined by her sister, Souseiseki, in the window, both watching. She shivered, and began training with Makoto.

* * *

Eighteen battlecruisers folded in high above the Martian surface, long, sleek shapes with rounded edges and hemispherical gun pods. Immediately, they began disgorging fighters, the transformable aerospace vehicles dropping rapidly towards the planet just over the horizon from the ongoing battle. They came in low, skimming above the first of the Gundams to arrive on the surface, still twenty kilometres from the battle but moving fast along the ground.

It was thirty minutes since the battle started, and so far the senshi were winning.

"Skull Squadron, this is Skull Leader. Report in." The squad leader, Hikaru Sakamoto, listened to his fourteen-strong squad to report in before continuing. "We're going to be going in hard and fast. Faster than they can keep up with. Understood? Missiles free, guns free. It's a free-fire zone and we've lost contact with the fleet; watch your orbital monitors for firing solutions. You see something coming your way, get clear. I don't want to lose anyone to friendly fire."

"Are they really senshi?" Skull Four asked, sounding a little timid. "I didn't think there were any left."

"It's almost impossible to kill a cockroach, Skull Four. Keep the unnecessary chatter to a minimum."

"Sorry, Skull Leader."

"They'd be senshi, all right," came the voice of their single miclonised Zentraedi in the squad, Lieutenant Haruka Klan. "Reports also say non-miclonised Zentraedi. Watch for them. But the senshi will be the real threat."

"Our Lieutenant has fought against a senshi before," Hikaru spoke to the squad. "Follow her lead."

"It was only a single minor senshi who didn't know what she was doing, but she was incredibly strong, and fast. And durable. Don't get into a protracted fight, and don't let them get in close. But also, watch them at a distance. Most have attacks capable of cutting through your armour like it was soft butter, or scattering you like a litter of kittens hit by a speeding car. If you take damage, it's not cowardly to pull back and let someone else go at it. Remember, we're just here to hold their attention until the Gundams and Evangelions can make it into the area. First Gundams are twenty minutes out. First Evangelions should be within thirty minutes after that. We hold them that long, then pull back and let the big guns go at it toe to toe with them."

"O-okay," Skull Four replied.

Hikaru checked his monitors and HUD. "We're coming up on them. Lock wings in attack position. Skulls Two through Four, on my six. Six through Eight form up on Skull Five, Nine through Fourteen, you're wave two. Hang back until we've made our passes and come in hot while their attention is on us."

A chorus of understoods and affirmatives echoed back through the squadron channel, before an indicator blinked into life on Hikaru's HUD. "Break break break! Let's go, Skull Squadron!" he banked his fighter, cycling through weapons and firing as fast as his vehicle's systems were capable of. "Skull Two, watch out, minor senshi on the other side of the main group look to be getting our range. Skull Five, ready your group from forty-five degrees north for your run and start on my mark." He rotated his craft in a barrel roll, dodging incoming attacks from a group of two minor senshi, before speaking again. "Mark." Two reaction warheads dropped from his wingtips and he sped off.

The reaction missiles impacted on an invisible barrier, as he had expected, but the smoke and flame and dust whipped up in the detonation was enough to shield the incoming second attack run led by Klan. A reaction warhead from that run impacted into the ground, exploding, but the superheated plasma reaction was contained in moments by a pair of younger senshi.

"Second wave, come in from opposing angles, thread the needle, drop your payload, then wave one will go individual. Wave two pull back to a safe distance and replace us as necessary."

"Skull Eight is gone," came Klan's voice on the squad frequency. "Plasma burst. Wave two, watch yourselves."

They lost another Valkyrie in the second wave, and Hikaru had to admit he was impressed. With all he'd read and studied about the senshi from the record books, he'd have thought they would have lost at least three times as many in the initial run, but two was a stellar performance. He was still mentally congratulating himself on that fact when Klan keyed him on a private frequency.

"They're protecting something down there," she said, glancing back over her shoulder in the small vid window. "They're arranged in a defensive formation. There's a crater down there, looks like they might be protecting something in it."

"Hang on," Hikaru said, running back through his gun camera footage, automatically recorded when he went weapons-hot. There was something in the crater, something big. "I count... a lot... of full-sized Zentraedi down there as well. They're digging something out, I think."

"That digging is probably what triggered the alarms on Earth."

"Skull Four, tighten it up. Check your flaps and verniers before we go in." Back on the private channel, Hikaru mused, "But what could the Zentraedi be digging up that would be important enough to have this number of senshi throwing away their lives to protect?"

"One of the big guns?" Klan queried.

"Maybe something that could change all life on Earth." Hikaru thought. "No... no. Remember reading about the senshi when we were kids? How they protected their future through the use of time travel? What if that's some kind of time machine and they're planning on sending a force or knowledge on how to win the war back in time?"

"We can't allow that," Klan replied fiercely. "We can't allow them to undo what's been done already!"

"It's only a guess – Skull Eight, watch that crossfire! – but it sounds like them. Magical saves and manipulation. Either way, we have to stop them." Hikaru crossed over to the squadron frequency and spoke to the squad as a whole. "Skull Squadron, I'm sorry to say this, but I'm changing our target. The senshi are a smokescreen. There's something going on in the crater back there. Whatever it is, the senshi are protecting it rather than themselves. Go for the object your targeting sensors pick up in the crater when making your runs. Go individual on my mark, pick your field and form of battle. Make me proud. Mark." He keyed back over to Klan. "Now, let's just see how we go."

* * *

Inside the bunker, Setsuna and Chao watched as Skull Squadron made another pass. Another jet was downed, the armoured cockpit and nosecone exploding off the front a scant moment before the rest of the plane detonated. "Pilot survival mechanism," Chao explained as Setsuna watched the nosecone fired hidden RCS thrusters a moment before it hit the ground, slowing its speed considerably. "When the Valkyrie detects a critical amount of damage, it ejects the forward part of the fuselage for pilot survival. You'll see it a lot."

"This is horrifying."

"This is nothing. This is only a few dozen fighters, total. There'll be Gundams and Evangelions here soon enough, and that's when the fun really begins."

"The senshi aren't doing much damage out there, either." Setsuna regarded Chao with a questioning look. "I thought they were all trained in... in combat techniques and were ready to fight a war."

"Fast moving planes? No problem. Battleships in orbit? No problem. Thing is, Jupiter and Nemesis out there are trying to keep things low-key. They don't want Earth to send in the big guns yet. It's still going to take a while to dig the gate out and power it up and they want this to go on as long as they can."

"Won't Earth send everything it's got against us?"

"Well, yes, but it takes time to mobilise." Chao hopped up on a bench, dangling her legs beneath it and leaning forward slightly. "Jupiter doesn't want to give Earth any reason for concern and hurrying its preparations. Once they fully mobilise, we're out of time. She's hoping it doesn't come to that. She's hoping that... well... we can get back in time before the majority of forces arrive."

Setsuna turned back to the thickly-armoured window at a flash from outside, watching another Valkyrie crash into the Martian landscape. "How many more of these jets will arrive?"

"There's probably hundreds in orbit already, making their descents towards the planet." Chao stopped for a moment as Nemesis generated a massive beam of energy directed at the sky and moving it ever so slightly. "See that? Probably a hundred less planes now."

Setsuna shivered. "Is this what becomes of the senshi?"

"It only is if you fail. The war cannot start. You have to prevent it to stop this from ever being necessary. There was no amnesty, no attempt at peace or reconciliation after the war; the humans just stopped wanting to do that kind of thing. It's scary. You read the history books, and after wars, there was a period of rebuilding for both sides, greater ties and engagement in political matters. But... Sailor Moon broke them in ways they couldn't come back from. She showed them, well before they were ready to handle it, that there are forces out there in the universe that are simply more powerful than them."

"So they go to war instead of trying to understand them or reason with them now?"

Chao shrugged. "To be perfectly honest, did humans – or our kind, for that matter – ever try and reason with an enemy? That was always something to cover getting their forces into position for an attack, for the first strike. It was never about being nice or being fair or being just. It was always a smokescreen. They've just... dropped that now. If they try to make peace, they're fully trying to understand their adversaries. If they're not... watch out."

"They don't sound so different to the people of my time," Setsuna admitted.

"Oh, don't you believe it. Your people, well, according to those who were still around then, were passionate, emotional, and violent. People today... are cold and dead. They don't visit the emotional extremes like they used to. They're... scared of what those emotions can produce." Chao nodded back at the window as the bunker shook slightly with a deep rumble of thunder. "Orbital bombardment. Someone up there's getting anxious."

* * *

"Nemesis, can you drop that carrier? Its covering fire is getting annoying." Jupiter threw out her hands a moment later, "Jupiter Oak Revolution!"

"Sure," Nemesis replied. "He never wrote or called, anyway." Jupiter gave her a hard look. "We're in battle. We're the good guys. We're supposed to quip."

"Sometimes I forget you were the expert on all things television."

"Gotta have a specialty," Nemesis grinned, before launching an intense beam at a point in high orbit. Something sparked a few seconds later, and Sailor Dione, standing behind her with a data pad, sounded off.

"Carrier Kyon down. Launching life boats."

"Do we...?"

"No. The death toll from this is going to be catastrophic as it is." Jupiter looked particularly grim, shredding another fighter as it passed. Two more came in, and dropped their legs down to slow their approach and make lateral movement a lot easier to try and avoid Jupiter's attacks. She shot a leg off one, but the other dodged and fired a spate of bullets at her. She frowned and gritted her teeth as they bounced off. "That doesn't hurt, but it's as annoying as hell!" A moment later, that plane was consumed by green energies and pulled apart from the inside-out. "No. If possible, I want casualties to be at a minimum."

Nemesis cast a worried glance to the sky. "Should I be shooting down battleships, then?"

"Minimum, I said, not non-existent." Jupiter glanced around the battlefield, taking in the faces arrayed against the swarms of fighters that swept around them. "Charon, how far out are the Gundams?"

"Ten minutes."

"Damn. We'll have some fighting then. Evangelions won't be too far behind them, I guess."

Charon flipped a few pages over on her pad. "Diana reports forty Evangelions boarding transports at Tokyo-2. Artemis says sixty at Hanover. He also says he's hearing rumours on base that Unit-01 is being woken from cryostasis and the Lance is being unlocked."

"The big guns," Nemesis remarked.

"Indeed," Jupiter replied. "Is Sailor Shiva up to joining us?"

"She's in the infirmary, trying not to get involved. This brings back bad memories."

"I know," Jupiter sighed, "but we need the firepower. We've got to keep this crater clear for the next few hours. Sailor Eros! Can you ask Shiva to join us, please?" The minor senshi nodded, and headed off quickly.

Her next words were interrupted as a flight of four Valkyries, all bearing the white skull on black backing insignia of Skull Squadron, flew overhead, low, before dropping their engine assemblies down into their leg configurations, and unfolding their arms, gunpods clutched already in their mighty hands, but their cockpit and nosecones still in their jet formation. In this gerwalk mode, they became slower, but much more manoeuvrable than their jet modes, and being slower and with manual aiming, capable of firing in a much more precise manner.

They halted over the crater, and sighted their rifles down into it.

"Don't let them shoot!" Jupiter yelled, reaching back and generating a packet of superheated plasma between her hands before throwing it towards one of the jets. She caught it in its powerplant, behind the cockpit, and the fighter exploded. The detonation nudged the fighter immediately beside it, blackened shrapnel ricocheting off its armour, and throwing off its aim. That Valkyrie immediately targeted one of the nearest minor senshi and opened fire, catching the minor senshi unawares and laying her shoulder open. "Be careful! They're armed with reaction ammunition! That can pierce our skins! Bring those fighters down!"

Sailor Nemesis placed a foot back to brace herself as she brought both hands up. "Ultimate Richter Wave!" A coherent blast of gravitons smashed into a third Valkyrie and crumpled it up into a ball the size of a grapefruit, even as Nemesis was pushed backwards a dozen metres by the kickback of the attack.

"Kupier Crush!" came Charon's voice, and a third attack sailed past Nemesis and into the second Valkyrie, now looking for a second target to attack as its original senshi target had dropped from the fight. The fighter shuddered, then splintered into hundreds of pieces, the pilot buffeted about by the forces before finally being thrown to the ground.

The fourth fighter, obviously the squad leader judging by the chevrons to his squad insignia, jetted off almost immediately, and as the senshi turned to track him, another our Valkyries popped up and repeated the manoeuvre, heading for the crater.

Jupiter looked aggravated. "Did they tell _everyone_ what was going on here?"

* * *

Chachamaru touched Asuna lightly on the shoulder. "I am here to relieve you," she said, gesturing slightly in the direction Asuna had been looking when the girl turned around.

"Oh! You startled me, Chachamaru. How... how is your hand? And your chest?"

The gynoid held up her injured arm, half of the forearm and hand held to her arm by duct tape that Satomi had found in her bag. "Satomi has performed field repairs, but I will not be operating at one hundred percent proficiency until we can return to the Academy and make repairs." She also pulled her sliced-open shirt to one side, to show the duct tape also holding her upper body together. "This tape is... most useful in android construction."

"Are you okay to stand watch? If you're damaged –"

"If Mana attacks, you, Ku Fei, Kaede and Setsuna are our best current hope for defence. It is better if the four of you are rested and ready for an attack rather than being tired when the fight starts."

"What about Eva? I bet she could help."

"The Master is with Satomi and Chao at the present time, discussing removing," and rather than say the words out loud, Chachamaru gestured at her throat, where the Battle Royale explosive collar rested.

"Oh."

Asuna trailed back into the group of girls near their cave, sitting around, talking quietly. Chisame held a makeup pencil in her right hand very tightly – so tight, Asuna noticed that Chisame's fingers and thumb were white with the stress she was putting on the pencil. Her left hand tapped relentlessly on her laptop's keyboard. She looked uncomfortable being with the group, hiding behind her thick glasses and her bangs. Well, she'd just have to put up with it. Asuna made a mental note to have more to do with her when they got back to school.

The others were less restrained, but still quiet. Chizuru especially just sat and watched, her face still showing signs of the stress they were all feeling. She had only just escaped from Mana a short time earlier, and her face was still as tight as it had been when Konoka had healed the injuries to her head. Her left hand rested just inside her backpack, which was torn and bloody.

Misa Kakizaki sat with her head resting on Nodoka's shoulder, the two girls sitting very quietly by themselves, but near Chisame. Misa's eyes were closed but she wasn't asleep, Asuna was sure of that.

Nearby sat the other remaining cheerleader, Sakurako Shiina, who was sitting with Ku Fei, Setsuna and Konoka, and it was this group that Asuna headed to. "How is everyone holding up?" she asked as she sat down.

"Everyone is waiting for this to end," Setsuna murmured. "Everyone thinks it will be over soon, one way or the other."

"We not making very good television," Ku announced.

Konoka sighed, her head tilted back looking at the sky. "It's so blue."

"You really need to get your head into reality, Konoka," Asuna grumbled. "We're facing almost certain death. I keep thinking Negi will come through for us like he did in Kyoto, but how is he going to do anything here against thirty explosive collars and a bunch of TV executives?"

"That's just it, Asuna," Konoka replied, not taking her eyes off the sky. "If this all ends tonight, if we all end tonight, I want lots of happy memories. Time with Secchan, time with you, time with my friends. Good memories."

"Any sign of Mana?" Setsuna asked.

Asuna shook her head, and looked unsettled. "Nothing. I heard something before, it sounds like Zazie and that magical girl might have found each other." She paused. "Is it bad I want my classmates to die?"

"Yes," Konoka said seriously. Asuna wasn't sure if she was joking or not.

"I mean, not kill people. But to get out of this alive? If Mana and Zazie came here, right now, and said 'let's stop fighting and find a way off this island safely,' I'd be all for stopping fighting. But..."

"An adversary is an adversary," Setsuna replied, an intense expression on her face as she glanced at Konoka. "We can't rely on Kaede to look after us, as well. I think she's looking for Mana right now, but she can't be having any luck, either, otherwise she'd be back by now."

"Well, you're a demon swordswoman, Konoka is a healer, I'm handy with my harisen, Eva's good with magic... we should be able to handle this." Asuna patted her knee, and glanced at Sakurako. Ever since Sailor Ceres had told them to look after the cheerleader, that she was special, Asuna had found herself wondering exactly what was special about the girl. Was she a mage herself? A magical girl? An alien? Why not? They had everything else in their classroom... She gave no indication of any kind of 'specialness', though, nothing that gave Asuna any indication of a powerful difference from within that would have made Ceres single her out so.

Sakurako simply looked at each girl in turn as they spoke, an excited expression on her face. She was currently looking at Asuna, obviously wondering what was making the other girl linger on her for so long. Asuna looked guilty, and fumbled, "I was just wondering why you're not taking bets on how long we'll survive."

"A bet is no good if you're not around to collect it," Sakurako replied in a light tone that made Asuna think she wasn't taking the matter seriously.

"We'll get out of this yet."

"Maybe you will," Sakurako conceded, "but I have this feeling I won't."

"Why you say that?" Ku asked. "We no let you get hurt."

"Oh sure, everyone's looking out for me, I've heard you all talking. I'm not deaf. And if there is something to me, then I'm going to be Mana's first target, don't you think?"

"N-not at all," Asuna stammered. "She'll go for those of us who are strong first. You'll see. You and the others will be safe."

"I've given it some thought. I bet Mana will go for the weaker girls first, get the distractions out of the way. If I'm going to be special, it's going to be in the future, it's not now. So I'm a special person, with no special abilities. So I'd be the first target, or one of the first. Best to get me out of the way while I'm weak."

It was a remarkably calm pronouncement of her impending death, and that surprised Asuna. "You're taking this awfully well, assuming you're right."

"From the moment Fuka died, I knew I was going to die as well. I got used to it a while ago."

"That's so sad, Sakurako," Konoka said placidly. "Strangely, I felt the same way."

"Neither of you are going to die today," Setsuna replied firmly, locking each girl's gaze in turn. "We will protect you."

"Now, now, Asuna, realistically, there are going to be more of us who die before this is over. If my death can stop someone else from dying, then that's okay with me."

"I feel the same way," echoed Sakurako. "I may not now be the kind of special that the... fairy said I am, but I'm betting I could make something of my death. Something important. A catalyst for further change and survival of our class."

"That's not something good to talk about," Asuna said, cutting across Sakurako firmly. "None of us are going to die, we're all going to survive. We're ready for Mana."

"What about Zazie?"

There was a noise in the distance, echoing across the island, a noise that sounded like all the souls of hell screaming for bloody justice. Asuna shivered. "I don't think we have to worry about Zazie."

"The fairy could barely stop her last time," Sakurako pushed. "What makes you think she's going to be able to stop her this time?"

Konoka giggled, a soft sound in the afternoon sun. "She's not around us."

"So?"

"So she doesn't have to hold back."

"Unless," Asuna muttered to herself, "the big fairy is still scared of getting the little fairy hurt."

Chizuru gave a casual glance over at Asuna's group, and turned to Chisame. "My, but things have changed since I saw you all last. I can see why Asuna, Ku, and Setsuna are together, and Konoka, but why is Sakurako there?"

"Save the cheerleader, save the world, is what I got told," Chisame replied, not glancing up from her laptop as she tapped away furiously with her left hand while her right clutched the makeup pencil. "The fairy told them she was very important, or something. I think they all think she's special and somehow going to get us all off the island and back to Mahora."

"Really?" Chizuru seemed surprised and gave Sakurako a critical once-over. "I don't see anything," she admitted, finally.

"Who does? If she's a magical girl, though, it would just cap this class off nicely."

"Oh? What do you mean?"

Chisame sighed, but really, as one of the more normal members of the class, Chizuru was someone she didn't mind talking to. That said, the subject was something she found disturbing. Finding out she was right, and her class was full of weirdoes was disturbing to say the least. She had always suspected Chachamaru was a robot, but Konoka some kind of mage? Evangeline a vampire lord with a teenager's sexy appearance? Kaede being some kind of super-ninja, and Mana an assassin for hire? What next? Maybe Chao would turn out to be a Martian or something. She snorted and pushed her glasses back up her nose. "Haven't you noticed?" She pointed out various students as she spoke. "Vampire. Robot. Mage. I don't know what she is, but those bells in her hair can't be good. We've also got an assassin tracking us, and from the video I saw earlier, some kind of demon. All in our class."

"Would that be Setsuna?"

Chisame gave Chizuru a searching look. "No. Zazie. She... grew this weird white mask and attacked the camp a while ago. Saw it on YouTube." She gestured at her laptop.

"That's scary."

"You're telling me," Chisame admitted. "It's like I don't know who anyone here is anymore. Not that I ever really did."

Chizuru rested a comforting hand on Chisame's shoulder. "It'll be all right soon. The show is nearly over."

"I'd like that," Chisame admitted. She started in surprise as Chizuru hugged her before standing and walking over to Asuna's group. At no time did she see what Chizuru had removed from her backpack with her left hand and used the hug to conceal in her left sleeve. As Chizuru left, she glanced over at Misa and Nodoka, now quietly whispering to one another. She thought it was nice, and peaceful, something to forget the violence she had seen online and in the eyes of the girls in the camp.

Little did Chisame know these slight remains of her world had less than a minute left before they would die forever.

* * *

Sailor Ceres' fight with Zazie had been going on for five minutes now. Both had struck once or twice, but Ceres had the feeling Zazie was playing with her. It didn't matter what she did, the strikes she made to Zazie never seemed to be crippling, or even pain-inducing, but the few strikes Zazie got through Ceres' defences did hurt – her sword could cut Ceres, as Zazie so painfully reminded her at every opportunity.

Another swing of her blade again, a vertical one this time, and it sliced up Ceres' right forearm as she brought it up to block it from striking at her face and chest. Sailor Ceres' fuku was adorned now with cuts and dirt, starting to fray around the edges. She glanced at Chibi-Saturn. "Do I lose my powers if I lose my clothes?"

Saturn blushed, but shook her head. "Nooo. But I might die. It would be the first proper time I've seen you naked."

Ceres blinked, and forgot to dodge a strike that buried in her left shoulder. Blood spurted from the wound on contact, but after Zazie withdrew her blade, the wound sealed and began healing as the others had. "Argh! That is so annoying!" Without warning, Ceres stepped up the pace for a moment, flicking with pseudomotion as she appeared in a number of spots around Zazie, sending finger-jabs towards Zazie's throat and other vulnerable spots. Of the hundred or so jabs, four got through Zazie's defences – one hit her throat, causing her to gargle and step back, but not in time to avoid one to each shoulder and another one to the left side of the bottom of her ribcage. Once Zazie had stepped back, she recovered her defensive posture, and Ceres' attacks failed to get through any further.

"What did you think you were doing?" Saturn wailed. "You could have ended this!"

"I couldn't have ended it, not yet, not in one punch or anything," Ceres said, through gritted teeth as Zazie went back on the offensive and forced Ceres to block, dodge or flip over her incoming attacks. "She's a bit stronger than a one-hit win. And she wouldn't go down that cheaply, either. No, this is a fight." Ceres said the last sentence with excitement tinging her voice. Saturn looked up, a satisfied look on her face.

Her Ranma hadn't changed. Still the same, inside and out, and what was more important was his contact with the Dark Kingdom hadn't seemed to influence him in any way. What he was doing... she finally understood. Ranma had seen what the senshi hadn't. There had to be a way for the two sides to live in peace. Did that mean providing help to the enemy? Maybe. Did it mean apologising for past wrongs? Probably. Did it mean a lot of effort, instead of just posing like kids and trying to beat their problems out of their enemy? When did hitting someone ever create a lasting solution? Wasn't that what Queen Serenity had tried all those eons ago, which had led to the end of the Moon Kingdom? Wasn't that the point of Usagi's dreams, her flashbacks to her previous life as Princess Serenity on the Moon? Showing the war was, if not started by, then very much called for by Queen Serenity, trying just such a tactic.

Did Ranma trying something different mean he was right? Saturn didn't know. But the senshi had been fighting for six years now, although Saturn had only come into it four years earlier, and nothing had been fixed, nothing had been resolved – there were patchwork mends on old conflicts, but nothing lasting. Was Yoshihiro the person they could deal with from the Dark Kingdom, the person who could unite the various forces and bring them to task? Could he be the person to create a joint future? Was this was Ranma had seen?

Doubt, indecision. She knew now what Sailor Ceres had meant when she had said Yoshihiro was beset by indecision. She was experiencing it herself. Should she join her beloved in the Dark Kingdom hideout? Could she become Mistress Saturn again and remain true to herself?

Ceres seemed to know what she was thinking. "I don't need you, not in the way you're probably thinking. You couldn't do what needs to be done."

"How did you – what do you –"

"Easy, Sailor Saturn, easy. It's written across your face what you're thinking." Ceres blocked another swipe with a forearm, before pivoting and sending a kick up along the plane of the blade and into Zazie's stomach. The girl grunted, and was thrown back a few metres, but readied her sword again and came at Ceres. "You're thinking, 'why don't I go back with him? Why can't I be with him and help him?' That's what you've been thinking since you turned up here. You weren't wanting to find out what I was thinking, what I was planning, you were wantin' to join me. Wantin' to jump ship, leave the senshi and come fight with me, at my side."

"No, I..." Saturn fell silent.

"It's all right. I already know. But I don't need you with me. What I'm doin', what I've got to do, I need to do alone. Yoshihiro would accept me, even if he knows my part in this, but he wouldn't accept you. Even if he did, Umiko wouldn't accept you, and she still holds a lot of sway in Yoshihiro's forces. They're all scared of her, and she's probably pushin' whatever she can through while I'm gone. I have to get back, and soon." Ceres dodged a flurry of strikes delivered with the point of the blade, before Zazie rotated the blade ninety degrees so the cutting edge faced Ceres and stepped in closer, turning the blade so it lay parallel with Ceres' back at neck level. The implication was, she could kill Ceres at any time, and the fight was becoming insulting.

Ceres flicked in motion and appeared outside the range of the sword, holding up a hand. "Hang on a sec. Sailor Saturn, you have ta go home. You gotta go home so I can focus on this fight. You said you know where I was coming from with this switch? Great. Prove it. Drive the senshi to think other ways. Drive them to be different, become better. Watch out for Sailor Moon. Try and guide her to a less destructive outcome than she's pushing for now."

"I want to stay with you."

Ceres cradled the mini-senshi to her cheek, closed her eyes and smiled. "It's been good seeing you, too. But all good things must come to an end. At least, this will only be a temporary end. I'll see you again. We have a life to lead together, and we can't do that alone."

"There's just one problem."

"Ah?"

"I don't know how to stop this," Saturn admitted.

"Ah." Ceres glanced up at Zazie. "You got any experience with this kinda thing?"

Zazie stared for a moment, then stepped forward, raised her blade and dropped it.

"AHHHHH!" Saturn screamed.

"Hey, wait a minute!" Ceres yelled, instinctively raising her right forearm to block the sudden strike below her wrist, and saw her hand. Hand. Ceres stopped, blinked, looking at her fingers. Sailor Saturn was gone. She waggled her fingers back and forth, and even Zazie looked a little surprised.

"Oh," said Sailor Ceres, still stunned. Hotaru was gone. It was weird. Having the small girl attached to her wrist had come to feel... _right_. Having Hotaru that close to her had reminded her of what was waiting for her, and why it was so important this went off without a hitch. But right now, she felt a sense of loss. She cradled her right hand gently with her left, feeling the prick of tears at the corner of her eyes.

But then, realisation hit. "Oh."

Hotaru was gone. Her hand was back. She didn't have to hold back anymore, didn't have to fight with one hand tied behind her back. Zazie could go harder and faster, and now so could Sailor Ceres. It was just a matter of _how_ hard and fast she could go without attracting undue attention that was the concern. But, it would be fun to find out, after all. "_Oh._ This is going to be fun."

Zazie, frowned, concerned, stepping back. The confidence of her opponent had changed completely. She was no longer favouring the little girl on her wrist – it was like all her weaknesses had melted away with the little girl. The woman fighter was different. Her pose was confident, her attitude cocky, even. This was going to be a different kind of fight. Rather than reacting, the woman looked like she was ready for the fight, actively anticipating what Zazie would do before she did it.

Impossible, really. She hadn't said anything, hadn't done anything yet, and yet she gave off this... aura that said she wasn't going to lose. Maybe it was something she was actively putting out, maybe not, but the girl in the fuku wasn't going to be like she was before.

Zazie felt something she hadn't felt since she had first seen the magical girl. Sport. This girl was sport. Zazie was still pretty sure she would be able to take the magical girl, but it might take a few minutes longer than before. She had barely managed ten seconds of her own version of fast-stepping before; Zazie could manage over two minutes. She was unarmed, with easy-to-avoid magical attacks; Zazie was a close-in fighter with an as-yet unreleased zanpakutou designed especially for melee fighting.

No matter what rabbits this magical girl could pull out pull out of her metaphorical hat, Zazie was the superior combatant – or, at least, the strongest. She could feel the magical girl's strength, her power – and found it lacking. Still, she was experienced in fighting in ways the girls at Mahora weren't, and it had been such a long time since she had been able to cut loose...

Sailor Ceres finally assumed a ready pose, left leg forward and leaning on her right, her left arm forward, gesturing for Zazie to come at her.

Zazie brought her blade in close, the tip pointed directly at Ceres' stomach, then flickered with pseudomotion and vanished. The fight began anew.

Ceres sidestepped at speed, her full-body kachu tenshin amaguriken making Zazie look like she was standing still. The blade penetrated the front of her fuku, but missed her skin, so finely had Ceres judged the movement. As Zazie flickered back into normal speed, Ceres was leaned over the blade from the side, eyes wide open in innocence as she asked, "What were you aiming for? The side of a school block? Maybe a tree?"

Zazie growled, and again stepped up her speed in a shunpo, swinging her blade around and stepping to try to slice directly through Ceres, but again Ceres was elsewhere, this time on the other side of the small clearing they were in. "What are you trying to do?" Zazie flickered, and buried her sword into a tree, with Ceres peering innocently over her shoulder. "What did that tree ever do to you?"

Ceres didn't dodge the elbow to her face that Zazie tossed over her shoulder, but she was expecting it, and allowed it to hit. "Wow. Is it me you're trying to hit? Really? Wow. I'm flattered, honestly. I just thought, seeing as you weren't coming close, that you must have been trying to hit an imaginary friend or something."

Zazie's eyes narrowed in frustration and anger, while Ceres kept the inane patter up. "I'm pretty hard to hit, you know. I grew up being chased by cats, my father, multiple fiancés, and," Ceres gave an annoyed look, "a giant bird. I lived my last year fighting evil monsters from another universe. I'm now battling to save thirty... no, must be about twenty girls left now from being executed. Are you sure you're not wanting to help with that? Hmm? What do you say?" Ceres gave her most hopeful expression a chance.

Had Zazie been male, surely her heart would have melted at the redhead's imploring look, but Zazie wasn't even quite female, and so it did nothing.

"Well, then, why are you doing this?"

Zazie gave no response – no verbal response. She launched another flurry of attacks at speed, and to Ceres it seemed like her zanpakutou was everywhere – but Ceres relied on her experience and her intuition and speed and dodged everything that came her way. "You're so rude," Ceres whined as she sidestepped another jab, before cartwheeling over a wild swing. "And watch that arm. You're going too wide." Zazie paused for a second before whipping the blade back around, trying to catch Ceres in a scythe-like action to her left, but Ceres spun up on one leg, raising her other above the swinging blade and bringing it around to crack solidly into Zazie's jaw.

The masked girl's body rocketed through the air and smashed into a couple of trees, turning them into splinters, before finally digging a hand into the ground and slowing her motion enough to stand again. Zazie shook her head once to clear it, then disappeared again into her shunpo move, before bringing the sword down into Sailor Ceres' shoulder.

It bit deep, and Ceres cried out unintentionally as Zazie yanked it back out, the blade doing more damage as she pulled it back. Ceres started healing almost immediately, her own physique helping the healing as much as the fact she was jacketed in an other-dimensional body that rejected injury. Zazie struck again, but Ceres caught the blade this time, grimacing in the pain the action brought.

Zazie's head jerked up so her eyes met Ceres', then she delivered a stunning kick of her own to the senshi's midriff, throwing her backwards into a rock wall, which cratered around Ceres with the force of the kick. Ceres started pulling herself out after a stunned moment, only to find herself hammered further into the rock by a follow-up punch from Zazie, who then jumped back, holding herself ready for when Ceres moved again. But, for the moment, Ceres was stunned into immobility.

* * *

Hotaru awoke with a start back in her own body, lying back in her bed where she had left it. But beside the bed, in her own writing, was a brief note – albeit one where the paper had been pierced as if by someone who had little experience with a pencil and how much pressure to apply to paper. Nearby, attesting to this fact, was a series of scrunched-up sheets of paper, torn to shreds, and two pencils, one shattered, the other with imprinted finger marks.

Hotaru checked the surviving pencil and found the finger imprints matched the size of her fingers, and looking closer it even seemed her fingerprints were indented on the wood. She raised an eyebrow in surprise, before glancing at the note.

"Don't leave me alone again," she read aloud, before shrugging. Leave who alone? She shrugged again, then stretched her shoulders by rolling them in opposite directions to one another. She felt... powerful again. Oh. That was who had been left behind. She smiled at the realisation, and gave a mental hello to the memories deep inside her. As she expected, there was no reply, but instead she felt unusually happy.

Well, that was a response as well, she guessed.

Hotaru slid off her bed, and saw a hole in her wall, leading to the lounge. There seemed to be something covering the hole from the other side, and she stepped out of her room, went into the lounge to see what it was.

Apparently, someone had pushed the big, heavy bookcase over the hole. "Weird," she commented, not hearing anything else in the dorm but herself and feeling she needed noise to feel comfortable. On impulse, she checked the far side of the bookcase, and found another handprint. Wow, Saturn must really have been annoyed.

She heard a noise outside; of course, late afternoon and the senshi would be training. She still felt tight and tired from her adventures on the island with Ranma, and she stretched again, before deciding to have a bath instead. The warm water would feel good. Maybe a dip in the springs out the back? That decided, she took a towel from her closet, and grabbed a few items she might need – loofah, soap, shampoo – and headed into the changing area, stripping off and wrapping her towel around her before heading out into the bathing area and sinking into the warm water.

It felt good after the island, made her feel human again as she scrubbed. While she wasn't physically dirty from her exertions, she did feel as if she had been rolling around in a pool of mud.

Sparring must have finished out the front, as she heard a commotion inside, then lots of feet running around the inside of the dorm. Finally, Rei stuck her head out of the door into the springs area, and yelled back, "She's having a bath!" There was a chorus of relieved voices from inside, then the girls came out, one by one.

"Where did you go?" Ami asked, once they were all in the bath. She had a laptop with her she was playing with on the edge of the pool, trying to get something working, but it wasn't working right.

"I went... well, I went to see Ranma."

"How could you do that?" Usagi asked, confused. "You slept on your bed for ages. You didn't go anywhere."

"I went... mentally. Hard to explain."

"Maybe not," Ami replied, turning away from the laptop, where there was an image of the small Hotaru gripping Zazie's blade in their first confrontation on the island. No matter how close Hotaru looked, she couldn't see Ranma's senshi form in the picture at all. "I found this late this afternoon. Fighting Shinigami now, Hotaru?"

"We don't know what she was," Hotaru admitted. "And that's a really bad photo. You can't see Ranma in it."

"How did you get so small?" Usagi wondered. "Drugs? I've heard steroids make you smaller."

"That's... not quite how they work, Usagi," Ami replied.

"It was... some kind of mental transference. Saturn told me how to do it."

The others fell silent. Being there such a difference between Hotaru and Sailor Saturn, it almost seemed as if they were two different people. While all the senshi had the separation between themselves and their previous incarnations that Hotaru had, it often seemed that the Saturn Hotaru referred to was more than just the memories and abilities the others had. Almost as if the original Sailor Saturn was still around, just waiting inside Hotaru for her to become the woman she once had been before the fall of the Moon Kingdom. But it was very unusual for Hotaru to mention the separation she felt and occasionally displayed.

"I thought it was going to let me see Ranma's heart, his intentions, speak to him on that level. Instead, I woke up attached to his wrist. It was... embarrassing, to say the least. First time I've been seen topless by a boy."

"Oh, Hotaru."

"But Ranma has a bigger chest than I do, and did then, so... I think that was okay. Just weird and scary."

"Ranma –" Ami began, then stopped, looking at Makoto, who shrugged. She changed tack. "You went to the island to see Ranma, but ended up as a little pixie-like creature, attacking spiritual beasts?"

"It wasn't like that," Hotaru said, defensively now. She drew her arms in to her chest and lowered her face to the water, not looking at anyone. "She was – she was good. The Ranma I remember."

"If Ranma's fighting there, should we go to the island?" Usagi asked.

"Huh?"

"Minako, he's a bad guy now. Whatever he's doing. We could go to the island, and save these girls and stop Ranma once and for all."

Minako shook her head. They'd had this conversation many times since Battle Royale had begun on television, and she suspected until the show was finished, they would have it again. And yet, every time Usagi brought it up, it seemed like the right thing to do. Going to the island, saving the girls, punishing the bad. If the senshi weren't there to stop evil from occurring, and stop evil from spreading, then what were they here for? She shook her head again, but it was much less certain than a moment ago as she considered the possibilities.

"We can't go in there," Ami replied instead, looking at Usagi with exasperation. She'd obviously had this conversation with her as well while Hotaru had been gone. "If we do, we run the risk of making things worse. Either having everyone die, or having everything collapse out here. This may have been set up by Yoshihiro, but this isn't organised by him. The television production crew are real, Big Man is real, they really work for Sakura TV."

"They run that Kira show by Demegawa, though," Makoto interrupted, inadvertently giving Usagi ammunition.

"That's right! That show where all the murderers and rapists and those bad people are all announced and punished." She sighed, almost theatrically. "If only we had the ability to lower crime rates like Kira does, then we might get some way to making Crystal Tokyo a reality."

"You don't mean that, surely," Rei said, leaning forward. "If he was connected with the Dark Kingdom, perhaps we'd stand some chance of stopping him, but he's not, so..."

"We leave him be?" Hotaru asked quietly, her face almost touching the water. Her short bob covered what the senshi could see of her face, and she was thankful they couldn't see her frustration and sadness. "Usagi's saying it doesn't matter if we go into a situation that's not to our liking but is under control, and possibly wind up with everyone dead, but then she's condoning a murderer? And Rei, you're suggesting that we not do anything about an evil man because he's not connected to our small portion of the universe? Do you know for certain that Kira's not some kind of Dark General, sucking the life out of people, and has just picked criminals so as not to attract undue attention?"

"It's called justice, Hotaru," Usagi said kindly. "It's something you'll understand when you get older."

"You're only a few years older than me!" she exclaimed out loud, standing up suddenly, hands balled in fists at her side. "You can't be serious. Ranma's off saving our butts and trying not to stuff anything up for us, trying to make the world a real better place, and you're saying we should murder anyone who doesn't think like us?"

"That's not what I'm saying at all, Hotaru," Usagi got firm, also standing for a height advantage and placing her hands on her hips. "What I'm saying is we have priorities. What we do in the near future will determine the way the human race goes. Yes, it's bad Kira is killing people, but would you prefer he kills innocent girls? Puppies? Or hardened criminals who the law is powerless to prosecute? It's up to the police to stop him, and they're not, so they obviously believe something Kira is doing is right!"

"I hate to admit it, but Usagi might be right," Minako conceded. "The police do know what they're doing."

"The policed are sc– oh, what's the use," Hotaru said, before bursting into tears, and climbing out of the springs, grabbing a fresh towel and disappearing, not even noticing Cologne's curious eyes as she passed the old woman, balanced on a rock on the far edge of the hot pool.

"She'll get over it," Usagi said, concern on her face. "But maybe I overdid it a little bit. The dolls, Ranma, this hatred that anything magical has attracted lately – I think it's all getting to me. But we can make this world a better place. If we create Crystal Tokyo now, in this time rather than a thousand years from now, that peaceful world of the future can be brought here, _now_."

"Would it work, though, Usagi?" Ami asked. "I'm not so sure."

"You don't want to help build Crystal Tokyo?"

"Well, no, that's not it. It's just..." Ami's voice trailed off, and she shrugged. "Yes, I do want to help build it. I'm just a little concerned..."

"Sailor Pluto hasn't turned up to stop us, so she must think we're doing everything right." With that statement, Usagi also stood and left the springs.

"Well," Makoto said. She was silent a few more seconds before continuing. "Well."

"Yes."

"She's right, though," Rei said, slowly. "You know it – I know it. We're supposed to create Crystal Tokyo, a place that creates peace and inspiration to all. It would bring that to the world, now, if we build it."

"We owe it to Usagi to help her realise this dream," Minako admitted. "She's helped us so many times over the years, we've been killed and she's brought us back, she's saved our lives, brought Sailor Saturn back to us and rejoined us with Haruka and Michiru... she's saved the world many times and her heart is always in the right place. It's why she's the Princess and will be the Queen. She just... _knows_ what's right. The right time to hug someone. The right time to make a cheerful comment. Sometimes, I think there's more going on behind her eyes, always watching, playing the klutz to allow us to not feel intimidated."

"She can be scary sometimes," Makoto agreed. "But you're right. She knows what's right. And she's our friend. We have to trust she's right this time as well." Her expression remained uneasy, though.

"She didn't think of saving Keitaro," Ami said, and left her statement at that.

Cologne remained silent, and almost invisible in the steam, considering her options.

* * *

More Valkyries screamed into Mars' thin atmosphere, coming down behind the horizon to avoid most of the incoming firepower. Fighters jostled for space, no good-natured chatter between the pilots as they all knew their chances of surviving were slim. At best, a Valkyrie, no matter how advanced, was mostly only good for distraction when fighting senshi. The heavy guns were the Gundam units, marginally able to hold their ground, while the senshi-killing Evangelions were the preferred weapon of choice. Of course, with the right pilot the other units could survive and even emerge victorious from combat with senshi, but there weren't too many pilots who were able to pull such a victory from their normally-assigned roles.

Down around the former UAC base, Valkyries in variations of all three modes – fighter, the chicken-legged gerwalk mode, and the bipedal humanoid battroid form – buzzed the senshi, while ships standing one hundred and eighty thousand kilometres out fired down towards the oxidsed surface of Mars. Their blasts were mostly deflected by the senshi, but the larger ships couldn't move in closer for fear of being shot down themselves. No one knew just how far a senshi could fire one of their quasi-mystical energy blasts, but they weren't firing on anything around the distance out the fleet currently lay.

Fleet planners thought they might have a greater effective range, but for some reason were more interested in stopping the fleet from closing on Mars, rather than launching a counterattack. No communications had been received from the ground forces, either. Once they reached a distance of thirty kilometres from the senshi, all communications ceased, and any planes trying to exit that range were shot down without exception.

On Mars itself, Hikaru and Klan circled around Sailor Triton, Hikaru's Valkyrie in gerwalk mode, and Klan's in battroid. They had their gunpods focused on the senshi, not letting up as the senshi tried to ignore them and focus on whatever her duties were.

However, while Triton was able to ignore their attacks, she was still buffeted by them, and it didn't take long for her to be knocked out of alignment with the others. For a moment, Hikaru's communications board lit up with fleet telemetry, but as soon as Triton recovered and threw her hands up again, the system went down again. "She's blocking our comms with fleet!" he announced to Klan. "We gotta take her down!"

Klan obviously agreed, diving in and grabbing the senshi in her battroid's hands, one grabbing her legs, the other holding her hands above her head so she couldn't activate any magical attacks. "I have her. Use reaction weapons."

"Affirmative, Klan. Stay still." Hikaru snapped a target lock on the girl being held by the giant robot, and let fly with a stream of small reaction munitions from his nose-mounted machinegun. The bullets impacted on the senshi, tearing holes in her fuku and skin, and she screamed, other senshi hearing this and turning to face the two Valkyries. Sailor Jupiter turned and shouted something that Hikaru couldn't hear in his cockpit but he did see two senshi break off from a small force on the lip of the crater and start heading towards them in quick leaps and bounds across the Martian soil.

"Hurry it up, Captain," the edgy tone in Klan's voice reminded him the other senshi were heading first for her. "She's not dead, but she's injured. And fleet telemetry is back up again. I'm getting eighteen target locks on this location."

"Just a moment longer..." Hikaru readjusted his aim for the lower gravity on Mars, and made sure his next shots would go straight through Triton's face.

"Stand down, soldier boy," came a young voice on the comm network. Something white and blue filled Hikaru's vision as something stepped in front of the cockpit. Half a dozen cable strands dangled down the back of the larger robot that had just obscured his vision, and he felt through the cockpit's wall rather than heard the zip-hum of the ignition of a plasma blade, immediately before he was awash in an azure glow from the sword as the Gundam brought it around sideways and sliced Sailor Triton in two. Her wounds were immediately cauterised, which stopped her injuries from bleeding out, but the shock killed her instantly anyway.

Hikaru backed away from the Gundam, even as he snapped on his communications line to Klan. "Get back, get back, the heavy guns are here!"

The Gundam in front of Hikaru turned to face the incoming two senshi, and Sailor Jupiter turned, annoyed, and said something to the woman standing next to her. IFF recognised her as Sailor Nemesis, who gestured with her right hand in their direction, and the Gundam compressed into a ball before the pilot could react. Hikaru realised the Gundam had dropped his blade weapon, the plasma stream extinguishing as the hilt bounced on the ground at his gerwalk's feet. Without thinking, he snatched the weapon up and stowed it in a storage bay.

Klan and Hikaru took to the skies just in time to dodge another blast from Nemesis, who then went back to firing straight up.

Hikaru toggled the commnet to the squad, while eyeing his IFF to scan for Skull transponders. There were only half a dozen left by now. Most of the Valkyries around now were either from Bones Squadron, or one of the many others having been dumped on the planet in the last thirty minutes by orbiting carriers. "Skull Squadron, we have fleet comms back up for the moment. Stand by for orders." He switched over now to the fleet link. "Captain Hikaru of Skull Squadron to Martian orbital fleet; we are currently engaging the senshi. Gundams have arrived, one senshi is down, but the others are still going strong. They seem to be digging something out of the ground here, that's what they're protecting. We can't get near with the forces we have to take out what's in the crater. Requesting further orders."

There was a mess of voices, as several people tried to respond on bad channels, but finally one firm voice cut across the others. "Evangelions will be on the ground in twenty. Hold out 'til then, son. We'll take them apart in hand-to-hand combat if we have to."

"Sir, we've counted at least seventeen senshi here, mostly minor senshi and two major senshi. There's a number of full-sized Zentraedi here as well. I recommend one of the big guns be used, if possible."

The voice on the other end of the line appeared to agree with him, judging by the tone of his voice, but his words spoke differently. "That's a last resort, Captain. But a Macross 20-class ship is being readied for an emergency fold if things go bad. We will beat them."

Hikaru's breath caught in his throat. A planet-buster. He hadn't thought they'd field one of those. He'd just thought the reaction cannon from a Macross-sized ship would be enough to wipe out the facility and kill these remaining senshi, and whatever they were digging up, it had to be bad news. "Sir, my XO and I have been discussing the item being uncovered. With the effort they're putting into protecting it, we think it has to be important. We know the senshi were capable of time travel, and we think it may be some kind of smaller Time Gate, or something. Like the ruins on Pluto. If they're trying to change the course of the war –"

The voice was silent for a few seconds, then replied, "Thanks for the information, Captain. We've been wondering –" The channel cut off again into static and the fleet link went down again. Hikaru glanced back at the battlefield and saw there was another senshi in the place of Triton, jamming the external signals in the area. He toggled back over to his squad channel. "Fleet says we're to keep them going. Evangelions will be here in twenty – and they're prepping a Macross 20 for an inbound strike if there's any doubt about what's going to happen. Until then, we have to keep them busy." There was a small flurry of affirmatives from the channel before Klan keyed in again.

"This is stupid."

"What is?"

"I keep thinking... I keep thinking my sister should be here."

"Lamallia's off at Proxima Colony, isn't she?"

"I have two sisters."

"Your record only says one."

"She's... the black sheep of the family. But this is the kind of thing she'd enjoy. I think she was on Earth a few days ago."

"The rogue Meltrandi fighting at the Tokyo ruins?"

"Yes." Klan was silent for a few seconds before continuing.

* * *

Watching Sailor Triton sliced in two drew a squeak of outrage from Chao from the bunker, and Setsuna had to lay a hand on her shoulder to stop her from rushing out to help. "They can't do this! If they left us alone –"

"Remember, we're fighting to end their existence," Setsuna reminded the younger woman. "Of course they're going to fight back, even if they don't know that their existence is wrong, that all of this is wrong, and it needs to go back to where there wasn't a crippling war that killed billions, caused by us."

Chao shook her head. "They're still my comrades, my friends. I should be out there helping them!"

"You've got to help me. When the gate is uncovered, we need to power it up. I can't transform still – believe me, I'm trying – and I need cover to get me there and someone to guide me in the – the past."

Chao simmered, but still cooled down. "All right. I know, I know, but I don't have to like it any at all." The Zentraedi turned away from the armoured portal in anger and disgust at her own uselessness, but she turned back moments later as a rumble rocked through the bunker. "I only know one senshi who gives off a feeling like that – Sailor Shiva!"

* * *

"She appreciated their side more than anything in our family or our history," Klan continued. "She ran away years ago and disappeared. I wonder if she's finally found the fight that she –" Klan broke off as a beam of rainbow colours accelerated just in front of her craft, smashing another of the two remaining Skull Squadron members out of the sky before it split up into a dozen streams and surgically sliced another dozen Valkyries out of the skies. "What was that?"

"High energy source inbound, matching the energy signature of... Sailor Shiva!"

"Isn't she dead?" came Skull Three's desperate question before his plane was downed, the pilot managing to eject from his armoured cockpit a moment before the plane exploded.

"Not dead enough," Hikaru replied, through gritted teeth. He glanced off to his left, and saw the bulk of the Gundam waves now entering the battlefield. "All Valkyries, pull back! Stand off and pepper them with ammunition. Keep the senshi occupied! When we can, we'll make another run at that crater."

As his remaining planes peeled back, Hikaru saw a Zentraedi begin climbing out of the pit, wiping his brow. An ejected pilot, ignored so far by the senshi, whipped his gun up and began firing at the sixty-metre target, but the alien just looked annoyed for a moment, before grabbing the pilot and throwing him. In the low Martian gravity, with the strength of the full-size Zentraedi, the pilot was out of sight in seconds, his transponder signal grimly reporting his arcing position until his signal bounced at ground level several kilometres away.

But that wasn't all he saw.

All the Zentraedi were starting to leave the pit. Whatever they were uncovering, it was now fully exposed to the elements. It looked like a giant black stone gateway, two roughly-hewn pillars standing on top of a small set of stairs. The space between the pillars had to be at least fifty metres, while balanced on the top of the pillars was a thick slab of the same obsidian material. While it looked like black stone, it shimmered as well, almost as if alive and moving.

"All Valkyries, they've uncovered whatever it was they were digging!" Hikaru keyed over to the strike force's channel. "I don't know what it is, but it looks like a gateway. The only things I can think a senshi-protected stone gateway can be used makes me think this one's for the species. Once the Gundams have engaged the senshi, we need to take out that gateway."

"Allow the Gundams to close with plasma blades and their close-in reaction weapons. Once they've done that," Klan advised, "we should almost have a clear run at the target. Watch for Zentraedi as well. Even unarmoured, they could crush your Valkyrie without much effort."

As Klan spoke, the first three Gundams reached the senshi's outer lines, and began duelling with the minor senshi. Jupiter and Nemesis helped where it looked like the Earth forces were getting the upper hand, but the Gundam ground forces weren't pushing very hard. Others of the giant robot brigade hit the lines running, firing chest-mounted reaction machineguns and armed with their plasma blades held out in front of them. Two minor senshi went down in these first moments, not dead but injured and ceasing their defence in shock. Others stepped in to cover them as Sailor Eros pulled them back to safety while they recovered.

Hikaru watched for Sailor Shiva, and found her discussing something with Sailor Nemesis. The older woman seemed to be coaxing the younger into fighting, but the minor senshi wasn't convinced she was needed, or wasn't able to help. It was hard to tell from the distance they were at, without sound, but it seemed as if Shiva didn't want to fight.

"It could happen again," Shiva sobbed. "I don't want to lose control."

"You won't," Nemesis reassured the younger senshi. "It's been a long time, and you're much more in control now."

"I can still feel it as if it was yesterday," Shiva said, as if she hadn't heard Nemesis at all.

"It's fine. You'll be fine. You've made great strides coming out of that bad place."

"I killed her, I did, and if I cut loose here, I'll kill again."

Nemesis turned from Shiva for a moment and casually downed another plane as it tried to pull back to a safe distance. "We're still fighting a war. Horrible things can happen."

"We weren't fighting a war then."

"Now you're just sulking. Shiva, I get it, I really do. I lived with guilt for a long time, but I had to get over it and make amends for the things I did. By the time I realised I had to, though, it was too late, and the war had started, and my chance to make things right had passed." Nemesis shot at a Gundam, forcing it back into its comrades with a hole melted through its chest. Two more fell down, set upon instantly by minor senshi who evaporated the pilots and tore the machines into scrap.

A shadow fell across Nemesis and Shiva, and Nemesis looked up to see one of the full-size Zentraedi striding past them, the ground shaking with miniature tremors through the ground at the fall of his feet. Jupiter stepped up to the pair, looking serious.

"It's this simple, Shiva. We're about to undo a thousand years of pain and suffering and put a stop to the war before it can start. We're hoping this will help you, but we don't know for sure, and every second we wait, things change and advance." Jupiter put her hands on Shiva's shoulders, and waited until Shiva met her eyes. "It's time to let go. This won't be around for long. We need the victory now, time to power up the gate, give Setsuna and Chao the time they need to go back and make sure none of this happens."

Something changed in Shiva's eyes. Far in the back of them, there was the cruel, disturbed spark Jupiter remembered from so long ago. "Nothing matters?"

"Just be prudent. We're sure you can do that."

Nemesis frowned at Jupiter. "We shouldn't –" But Jupiter held up a hand behind Shiva's back – the meaning was clear: be quiet. "But –" The hand rose higher, and annoyance flashed on Jupiter's face.

"Sailor Shiva, we can fix the past. But we need you to help us now. Like you just did before. I know you can do this. I know you can save us." Shiva looked undecided, and glanced imploringly up at Nemesis for guidance, but the elder senshi's eyes were locked on Jupiter.

"This is a dangerous game," she said. "She's barely been able to hold it together since we found her again. This is wrong. This is pushing her right back to where she was."

"There's nothing wrong with this," Jupiter shot back, taking her eyes off Shiva and refocussing on Nemesis. "None of this will matter shortly. But we have to hold out long enough to count. We have to deliver Setsuna to the past. If we don't, then this has all been in vain and we will all die without having fixed things."

"It's all right, Sailor Nemesis," Shiva said, putting her hand up onto Nemesis' stomach and giving her a gentle push. "I can help out. Please. I'll be good. And no one will have to worry about these tinker toys. Ever since Negi died, I've been kind of aimless, hopeless. Maybe Sailor Jupiter is right, maybe this will count for something. Balance for what I've done. Maybe none of this matters, and what does matter is what will happen at the end of this. Whether Sailor Pluto has gone back in time or not." Her eyes unfocussed ad she gazed at something distant. "Setsuna... can't stop what happened at the start. I can see that now. But she might be able to stop what comes next." Shiva took a deep, juddering breath, and looked up at Nemesis again. The wild spark was in her eyes, and Nemesis felt a pang deep within herself that she hadn't been able to help her charge as well as she had hoped.

Nemesis stepped back, lowering her head in assent. "Okay, then. None of it matters, anyway. It doesn't matter what you do before you die, before any of us die. This is the end for us. We may as well go all-out, go fighting."

"Not go quietly into the night," Jupiter said. "I always wanted to be accepted. I never thought when I was at school that I would be shunned for a thousand years. I'd always thought things would get better, that people wouldn't shy away from me. I can see that was a stupid dream, in time this, in this place. Maybe that other place can be a better ideal." She held out a hand to Nemesis.

Nemesis eyed it carefully, then took it in hers, two old friends shaking hands one last time. "Make it count, then. Make it, that if we don't succeed today, and this is all there is, that they remember us to their dying days. Make them tell stories about the senshi, and their power and commitment. Make them tell us as we were, our good and our bad, our wars and our peace. Make them remember what it means to fight history."

Shiva laid her hands on those of the others, and smiled crookedly. Then, she smoothed her purple hair behind her ears so it didn't cover her face, but revealed instead the vestigial bony horns she usually kept covered, and she broke the handshake by walking through it, towards the oncoming Gundams.

"She's going to kill them all," Nemesis said, watching, after Shiva had left their earshot.

"Yep," Jupiter replied. "We need the time."

"I just wish it didn't have to be this way. She was so close to escaping those demons. I don't want her to have to face them again if we fail."

Jupiter looked at Nemesis, shadow falling across her face, hiding what Nemesis suspected might be tears at the corners of her eyes. "We won't fail. One way or another, this is the end for us senshi. There won't be good memories of us if we fail at this. The bright side is that if we succeed, the last thousand years will never have happened. We won't have fought this war. We won't have lost Sailor Moon to the dark side of life. We won't have lost our friends and loved ones. It'll just never have happened."

"That's what scares me most," Nemesis admitted. "Are we making a clean sweep of everything, now, then?" Another pair of Zentraedi passed by, grabbing their digging tools to use as makeshift weapons. Nearby, one of the first Zentraedi out of the crater fell to the ground, dead from a blast through his neck that severed his spine. Jupiter nodded to Nemesis.

"The Evangelions will be here shortly. We'll have some time, but not a lot. Bring them down. All of them."

Nemesis nodded, and tilted her head back.

* * *

High above Mars lay the Earth fleet, standing (they hoped) out of range from the senshi on the surface. Now, over one hundred ships had weighed anchor, drifting close to one another. Every minute, another two dozen folded in from other parts of space – some from the solar system, others from colonies far outside Sol's immediate gravitational reach.

Onboard the flagship, the mighty star fortress Kyonko, Admiral Ichinose paced behind his lidar officers listening to them chime as ships arrived in local space. There had been no downings of a ship in over ten minutes. It had to be a good sign. There was a call from Ground Observations, in the next pod. Ichinose walked around the dividing holo-emitters to stand behind the junior officer watching the ground through the ship's massed external optical sensor array.

"Admiral, I've run this new arrival through our recognition knowledge base, and we've got a hit. This," the officer said, his finger circling an image floating before him, a red line trailing his finger as he moved it, "is Sailor Shiva."

"Is that accurate? Wasn't she counted amongst the dead in the riots? IRiS?"

This last was spoken to the image recognition software AI running the knowledge base. The voice, sounding slightly nasally with a lisp, responded as asked. "Ninety-nine point nine percent accurate in the recognition, Admiral. Thirty-seven recognition points match in the face out of thirty-nine, similar matches in pose, structure, motion studies, and the fuku is a one hundred percent match."

"She's attacking the Gundams, a multiple burst stream attack," the junior officer noted, his view tracking the minor senshi as she walked into battle, firing off rainbow streams to the left and right that burst apart into multiple tracking streams before slicing into the thick armour of her opponents.

Ichinose felt something wrong, a shiver affecting the midpoint between his shoulders. "What's Sailor Nemesis doing?"

The officer moved the view back, to see Nemesis flex her shoulders while shouting something in the thin Martian atmosphere, and a black shimmering burst erupted from her hands.

At the same time, alarms screamed from all around the bridge, and the ship rocked to one side.

"Have we been hit?" the Admiral called out over the din.

His XO, a few stations down, shook his head. "The Kurosaki has been sunk. And the Gin. Ronald D Moore. Munroe. Urotskidoji has taken heavy damage and listing to port... no, reactor containment's breached. Ship's been eaten from the inside out."

Ichinose grabbed at the back of a chair for support, sagging. "Five ships in one blast?"

"She's readying again!"

"All ships, pull back!" the Admiral ordered, snapping around to his comms officer. "Emergency folds, fallback position!"

The communications officer turned to her displays and began cycling through frequencies. "All ships, emergency fold out. All ships, emergency fold out." She continued repeating herself in the background.

"Tolstoy, Lucas, Tokiko and Saratoga sunk, Admiral."

"She's powering up for a third blast, Admiral!" The junior officer paused for a few moments, before exclaiming excitedly, "she's targeting us!"

"Brace for impact! Navigation, emergency fold out NOW!"

The bridge of the Kyonko brightened immediately as the fold sequence began, time stretching out for the Admiral and his crew, but then the ship lurched violently, and the fold aborted. "Status?"

"We haven't folded, Admiral," came an unsure voice from Navigation. "Um, Lieutenant Nagi's dead. Drive not responding."

The XO joined his Admiral, and leaned over to whisper, "Our drive system is gone. The back half of the ship folded, we were blasted down the middle in the midst of our fold."

"We're a sitting duck?" Ichinose asked, aghast. The XO nodded.

"Most ships have folded out, Admiral."

"Thank you, comms. Navigation, bring us about. Heading, Mars. Bring us down on their heads." Navigation nodded and buried himself in his work, trying to ignore the corpse next to him of his senior officer. "Once the course is set, everyone to an escape pod. I don't want to –"

But the Admiral's last words were lost to history, as Nemesis cut another attack into the ship, slicing through the bridge and down. The remains of the Kyonko shuddered, split in two again, and fell silent, the corpses of her crew floating silently in space ever to be a monument to the power of the senshi.

* * *

"No more problems from orbit, Sailor Jupiter."

"Thank you, Sailor Nemesis. They'll come back."

"When they come back in force, I'm not going to be able to down all of them. And if there's a Macross-class ship in the area, it doesn't need to be within my range to fire like these ones did."

Jupiter shrugged, and turned her attention back to the Gundam she was sparring with. "We just needed the breathing room." She glanced over at Sailor Shiva, tearing a Gundam to pieces with her hands and multicoloured streamers, pulling the pilot out and searing his flesh with the caress of her energy arms.

As Jupiter watched, the struggling pilot pulled out a pistol, armed with reaction ammunition, and fired off a single shot into Shiva's back. The senshi stiffened, and turned around, fixing the pilot in her gaze. Her multicoloured energy ribbons pulled away from the Gundam, but also from the pilot before they faded from sight. The pilot dropped to the ground, surprised, but a moment later was snatched back up into the air by something he couldn't see. He tried raising the gun again, but his arm simply fell apart as if sliced in three places by an invisible knife. He gaped, and Jupiter turned away before she saw the rest. She noticed Nemesis grimly looking on, however.

"This is what you wanted," she said simply to Jupiter, before turning back to the carnage.

Jupiter nodded; what else could she say? There was something about Shiva that frightened her like this. Even though she couldn't harm them when they were powered up, Nemesis had a point: the senshi had never been about wholesale slaughter, not until Usagi forced that on them a thousand years earlier. Instead, she tapped her earpiece to begin transmitting. "Chao, get Setsuna out here. Power up the gate, get her back through time. Stop this madness."

* * *

"That's it," Chao said, turning from the armoured window slits to Setsuna. "It's time to go." Setsuna grabbed an oxygen facemask, and put it on, handing another to Chao, who shook her head. "Senshi don't actually need them, as you can see out there," she explained. "And Zentraedi are designed to live in extreme conditions."

"You took one out before," Setsuna reminded her. "When we first went out to the dig site."

"Yes, but I was just being friendly." Chao gave a wry smile. "Besides, while my clothes are factored into my maclonisation switch here," she gestured at the control she'd used on Earth to switch between her full-size and micloned forms, "a face mask isn't, and that could hurt as the straps break in my growth to full size, should it be needed. Don't worry; I'll be fine."

"Oh." With that, Setsuna joined Chao in the airlock, and waited while it shut, and the breathable atmosphere hissed out to be replaced with the mostly carbon dioxide atmosphere native to Mars. Once the pressures had equalised, the outer doors cycled open, and the two dashed out.

"It's three hundred metres to the dig, then maybe another two hundred metres or so to the gate," Chao said as they ran on the loose soil and rocks. "We can make it safely if we run."

"Won't we trip over first at this speed?" Setsuna asked, horribly unused to running. She was the Senshi of Time, not Usagi, and she never needed to run, always being able to set up a meeting or arrive at exactly the right time without having to physically exert herself. This was unusual; and, she had to admit, kind of exciting as munitions detonated around them.

Frightening, too.

Especially when two Valkyries popped up behind them and began firing.

* * *

There were two women running towards the crater, Hikaru saw, one dressed in a form-fitting black suit covered with silver markings that almost looked like circuit diagrams by way of arcane runes, and the other dressed in a blue jumpsuit with a facemask. Both stood out on the red battlefield, even with the multiple carbon scores from various weapon strikes. "Klan," he said, thumbing at the two running towards the dig. Her plane, also in gerwalk mode, was alongside his. "Let's get them. Keep everyone out of that crater."

"Okay," Klan confirmed, giving a thumbs up while her eyes said other things she couldn't say over an open channel, things she would only want to say in person. Instead, her voice stayed professional instead of betraying what she thought, now that they were about to fly into certain death in the midst of over a dozen senshi. "We'll become a target for everyone down there."

"We've got help," Hikaru said, gesturing further behind the crater where the massive frames of Evangelions were heading towards them. As usual, they were approaching at a walking speed – it had been found in the war a millennium earlier to be psychologically devastating, watching implacable death take its time walking towards you. "Hopefully, they'll take some of the heat off us."

"Hopefully," echoed Klan. The two Valkyries jetted forward on their foot jets, zipping in closer to the escaping women, and began firing blasts from their nose-mounted machineguns. The two women spared a quick glance over their shoulders, and Klan froze. "Captain," she said in warning.

"Lieutenant?"

"The one in the black suit is my sister!"

Hikaru watched as the woman in black pushed the green-haired woman towards the crater, before turning back to face the two planes rushing towards her. "Captain, break left!" He did as Klan suggested, as a moment later a sixty metre Zentraedi stood where they had been, hands already moving to catch the Valkyries, but was just a moment too late.

"Captain, let me handle her," Klan suggested, triggering her plane's transformation from gerwalk to battroid mode. Hikaru nodded. What choice did he have? They only had moments, and Klan was the superior melee combatant of the two. He had to trust that her estranged family meant less to her than her duty to Earth did.

"Affirmative, Lieutenant. Good hunting." Again, there seemed to be something unsaid between them as Hikaru's gerwalk dodged under a kick from the full-size Zentraedi combatant, and reached down for the other woman, who managed to side-step the grab. A moment later, one of the minor senshi the IFF identified as Sailor Eros hit his ankle joint with a short rod, the strike disabling the vector-thrust controls on his portside main engine. He fired at her, but she jumped back, dodging, as he tracked the stream of reaction ammunition from his gunpod.

His gerwalk mobility compromised, he triggered his transformation from gerwalk to battroid, and brought all his weapon systems online, targeting Eros as she moved in closer for another strike. The first shots fired were to lull her into a false sense of security, leading her into his kill box. Once he had her where he wanted, Hikaru triggered all his weapons, and volleys of miniature missiles streaked out, acquiring their target and zooming in once they had armed themselves.

Explosions detonated across the woman, but they were conventional high explosives in the warheads – he was saving his reaction missiles for the moment – and while they annoyed and hurt the senshi, they didn't stop Eros.

No, that was left for his gunpod. Once Eros was disorientated, he locked her in and fired, the stream of reaction bullets cutting her in half through all her mystical defences. She died not even knowing she'd been shot. Someone else hit him, with a magical attack this time, but as the senshi were starting to shift their attention from the few remaining Gundams to the approaching Evangelions, no one had much time to pay attention to a simple Valkyrie, and the shot mostly went wide, ripping through one of his folded-up wings on the back of his battroid as the shot passed between his battroid's side and arm.

Rather than return fire again, he returned his attention to the woman, now slipping down the side of the crater, heading towards the gateway without looking back.

* * *

The kick and punch combination had winded Sailor Ceres, still pressed into the rock face. She sucked in deep breaths, trying to control herself and get back in the game. The physical damage was already healing, but Zazie was barely touched. Sure, she was injured, but at the moment Ceres was out of the fight, and Zazie wasn't.

It had to be the blade, Ceres reflected while she had these few moments to think to herself. Zazie was interested in fighting someone of her calibre, and thought that was Ceres. And normally, outside of a place she had to hide her power, that was right, she would be a match. But here, having to limit herself so as not to show up to Umiko back at the base, it was troubling. The variable output the blade seemed to put out told Ceres that Zazie could fight harder, at the very least, but not necessarily faster, while Ceres could power up further at the expense of almost any hope of resolving this island situation without anyone else dying, but definitely go faster now she didn't need to worry about Hotaru's constitution. At the very least, Zazie's strength mostly seemed to be focussed in her sword of unusual design.

Zazie waited, patiently, for Ceres to climb off where she'd impacted into the rock face to stand on the lip of the vertical crater, trying to get her breath back and her limbs moving. The damage was already healing fast, but she wasn't quite up to fighting the swordswoman again just yet, she still needed time. To stall, Ceres asked, "Why are you doing this? I'm trying ta get you off the island." Zazie didn't reply, simply shifted her weight to her other foot and back as if bored. "I mean, isn't that why ya fighting? Because ya want to be the last one 'n all?" Still, Zazie didn't reply. "Ya didn't attack until I got there, so why was that? Could it be because ya wanted a decent fight?" Bingo, Zazie's head turned to face Ceres directly, giving the senshi the very strong impression she'd hit the nail on the head. "That's it, right? Ya want a decent fight and ya think I can give it to ya." Ceres nodded, and started feeling more confident about her position. "But you weren't initially after me, were you? You were after the other girl there. But that was just to get me to fight you, wasn't it? You had no intention of going after that girl. It was just a threat to get me involved."

Zazie's head inclined in agreement; Ceres had got that right. She smiled, finally feeling up to fighting again. She stepped down from the crater she'd made in the side of the rock, confidence buoying her gait as she took a few steps forward, lightly springing from foot to foot. Zazie gave her a questioning look, which Ceres took to ask why she wasn't fighting at full strength.

"Well, just like you didn't want to fight anyone but me, I'm not wanting to fight anyone else at the moment. And if I go all-out, I'll be fighting more than you. So please excuse me for not fighting all-out." Zazie didn't like that, tapping the flat of her blade against her fist. "I'm sorry, it's just not going to happen. You're a good fighter, and once upon a time that would have been enough for me to go all-out, but now, I got other priorities and people countin' on me to look out for them. Not just on this island, but back where I come from. They'd be in danger if I went all-out on you."

Highly insulted now that Ceres wouldn't fight against her as hard as she could, Zazie leapt forward again with her zanpakutou held out directly in front of her, trying to skewer Ceres on the point of the blade, but Ceres sidestepped with a twirl to her right that made her grey skirt fly up, and continued spinning around while bringing her left arm up to thump Zazie in the back. The schoolgirl bounced into the rock wall, looking surprised under her mask, before spinning around. "I can still be a threat like this," Ceres reminded her. Zazie came at her again, point of her blade outwards but as she reached Ceres, she suddenly flashed into fast motion, bringing the blade around with her left hand as Ceres sidestepped, while at the same time using her acrobatic skills to whip to the right, pivoting on her left foot using the momentum gained from swinging her blade in the opposite direction and bringing her right foot up into Ceres' hip, pushing the surprised senshi up into the air and throwing her a half-dozen metres.

Ceres returned to the ground lightly, Zazie already moving into her strike range, and she snapped a high kick up with her right foot, leapt off the ground lightly with her left and brought that up in a spinning high kick, before transforming the movement once she hit the ground again into a double-punch to Zazie's stomach. The two kicks and punches were delivered with everything Ceres had available at the time, and satisfyingly, Zazie was thrown backwards, her cloak whipping around her body from the speed she was moving backwards at. This tangled her efforts to stop moving, which she eventually did by digging a hand into the ground, leaving a furrow of torn earth for ten metres. Ceres was on her again, not giving Zazie enough room to bring her sword up. The masked girl brought an elbow around into Ceres' shoulder, and the senshi automatically jumped back to give her some room. This was a good thing, as Zazie's blade slipped through where Ceres had been standing momentarily before, the elbow simply the first step in a two-part move to have her blade brought into play close to her body.

The two fighters took stock of one another, before Zazie cocked her head to one side, curious as to why Ceres wouldn't fight all-out, and raised her power level before taking to Ceres again. She flashed forward, swinging her sword around, but at the last moment, just before Ceres had fully committed to a block of the blade, Zazie shifted the position of the sword in her right hand so it balanced differently, and that was the moment Ceres knew that Zazie was preparing a strike with her left hand. Sure enough, Zazie's shoulders were shifting to allow it, swinging forward slightly under the cover of the approaching blade, and an instant later, Zazie's left hand was visible as she rammed it towards Ceres' ribcage.

Ceres rammed her right hand down as hard as she could, throwing Zazie's left hand down and away from her body, followed by a complicated jump-twist that saw her right foot first kick Zazie's right arm to remove the immediate threat of the blade from slicing into her before allowing her right leg to continue onwards so she was straddling Zazie's right arm , before violently scissoring her legs together and catching Zazie's arm in the middle.

Legs more powerful than a hydraulic press slammed down on Zazie's right arm, causing her to drop her sword momentarily as her arm busted in two places. Ceres heard the sickening cracks before the arm gave way completely. She wasn't able to remove herself fast enough to avoid Zazie's retaliatory strike to her back, though, and she felt part of her fuku give and Zazie's fist scrape on bare flesh even as one of her own bones snapped.

Ceres gasped and allowed herself to go limp with the punch, before rolling in midair and touching down with the tips of her boots and a gloved hand down on the ground to stabilise her. Zazie stood opposite, staring at her arm hanging loosely from partway down her bicep. She touched her right elbow experimentally, wincing under her mask as she did so and watched her arm swing freely back and forth around the breaks. She looked up at Ceres, standing upright with her hands on her hips while waiting on the floating rib in her back to knit back together. Zazie was healing as well, Ceres realised, just much, much slower than she herself was.

That didn't stop Zazie from grabbing her arm, and pulling it back into position with another sickening crack before ripping part of her black cloak apart and binding the break in her upper arm before considering the snapped elbow below it. A few moments later, Ceres didn't want to wonder what she was going to do about it, as she similarly grabbed it and bent it back into place with a wet meaty sound and wrapped it in more of her cloak. Then, she bent over painfully to pick up her blade.

"This is what I mean," Ceres continued speaking as if she hadn't broken anything at all, "I heal faster than you, I can move faster than you, and I'm probably a lot more skilled than you are. I get that you're strong. Like I am now, I think you might be stronger. But strength isn't enough." Ceres gave a bitter laugh. "Once upon a time, I thought strength was everything. Being stronger'n everyone meant I could win any fight. But time showed me that wasn't the case. There's always someone stronger. A dragon. A monster. A skeleton. A cat. They can beat you, if you don't fight smart. I'll let you in on a little secret." Ceres stepped closer to Zazie, still out of range of an immediate lunge, even as the other girl retrieved her blade, then leant heavily on it, waiting for her arm to recover.

"My family has a special move that we only use in dire circumstances. First time I used it, it was against... well, against a friend. He had the power to kill me, or so I thought, and he was going mad trying to do so." Ceres took a few steps, her back feeling better all the time, circling around Zazie now. "So, I pulled this move. I ran away, to give myself time to focus, reflect, think of a new way around what he could do. And then I challenged him again, and I won. He's probably stronger than me, but he's not as fast, just not as skilled. And that's why I beat him every time we fight." Ceres' gaze became distant. "Sometimes I wonder why we do it. I don't know anymore. Maybe it was the only way we could relate? But I've moved on, grown up. God help me, I've _matured_. He doesn't scare me, and neither do you. You know why you don't scare me?"

Ceres paused, looking directly at the young swordswoman. "It's because you're strong, but not strong enough that I can't beat you now I have both my hands free. You can't go much higher. You can't go all-out anymore. Look, I don't like fighting when there's no challenge. Seriously. Just sit down. I'll get you off the island like I will everyone else. C'mon, doesn't that sound like a good idea?"

Zazie's head snapped up, and Ceres suddenly realised the girl had been faking the extent of her injuries. But not just that; the girl raised her sword up in front of her, and spoke.

"Bankai."

Streamers of white dust plumed out from her blade, blown by intense gusts of wind, causing the streams to sweep around Zazie and her mask, and when the winds died down, the amount of raw power she was pumping out had only slightly increased, but Ceres realised this was merely because she was so tightly packed now with energy, very little was seeping out. Zazie's blade had melted and morphed, and was now partially armouring her right arm, tendrils creeping further up and mixing with the material of her mask, while at the same time spreading out into a pair of upright spines on her back reaching up over her shoulders.

To Sailor Ceres, with the forward facing darkened hollows at the very end they looked awfully like some kind of gun.

"Oh. Oh man," Sailor Ceres said, wishing for once she knew how to stop talking during a fight. It probably wasn't going to happen any time soon, but it _would_ be so nice to stop encouraging people to fight harder against her just the once.

* * *

"They don't understand me," Usagi sulked into the phone, lying on her bed. "They all think I'm crazy. They don't understand, though. I can make the world a better place _now_, instead of waiting a hundred or a thousand years to do it. Why shouldn't I do it now?"

"Setsuna always seemed pretty sure things would work out right, if she wasn't involved," Mamoru said from the other end of the line. Usagi enjoyed talking to him, but they did so rarely now. Since they'd come back from the System six weeks earlier, they'd seen each other once. They'd spoken on the phone a few times, but that just wasn't the same as being able to feel him, smell him.

Of course, if they got cosy, no doubt their hellspawn of a daughter would turn up, falling backwards through time to protect her father's chastity and innocence from the vile clutches of her mother. No doubt. Usagi snorted, thinking what Mamoru could teach Chibiusa would shut her up for good, before remembering that Chibiusa was her daughter, and it wasn't quite charitable to think such things about one's future children.

"No, she was always self-assured things would turn out right," Mamoru replied, mistaking Usagi's snort of humour for a comment on his original response.

"Don't you believe in me either, Mamochan?" Usagi asked plaintively.

"It's not that I do or don't. I'll support you, you know that. It's just... well... is it worth doing right now?"

Usagi got up off her bed and began pacing around the room. "I think so, Mamoru. Look at the way the world is going. There's this Battle Royale, there's Kira's show, also on Sakura TV, Dark Kingdom monsters making all magical people hated and feared. We're having to pretend we're a sentai group to get around that!" She growled in frustration. "And I'm being targeted by killer dolls from outer space. Really, it's about the only place they could come from."

"Yoshihiro didn't send them to you?"

"How would he know where we lived?"

"What about the time we spent in the System? Surely his Agents would have told him where they found you, who you were. Or he could have read our data. Or, Hotaru could have told him in that time you said she was possessed."

"Couldn't have been that," Usagi replied, thinking now while she paced. "He was trying to bid for our identities on Ebay a while back, after that."

"Then maybe he followed you all home sometime."

"Or maybe Ranma told him where we are."

"I never got an evil vibe from him," Mamoru admitted. "I can't believe he just switched sides like that."

"He said I was evil and would kill us all!" Usagi howled indignantly, swiping a stuffed toy off her study desk and throwing it at a wall where it flopped limply to the floor.

"Our daughter would agree," Mamoru chuckled down the line. "But I think, whatever he's doing, he's not gone into it blindly, and I think Ranma isn't what you think he is."

"He's a General for the Dark Kingdom, that means he's an evil life-force sucking murderer who probably wants to kill us all in our sleep."

Mamoru chuckled again. "I don't think it's that bad, Usagi. Why don't you just calm down a little? Sleep on it. You might feel differently in the morning."

"Mamochan, am I doing the right thing?"

Puzzlement coated Mamoru's voice. "What do you mean?"

"Working to make Crystal Tokyo a reality now, instead of in a hundred or a thousand years?"

Mamoru was silent for a while, until Usagi thought he had put the phone down. Finally, he spoke again. The pause hadn't been good for Usagi's charitable thoughts about her boyfriend. "Usagi, I have faith you'll make the right decision. I know you're caring, compassionate, and you may take a while to get there, but you always make the right decision. That's your greatest strength. You love everyone equally."

"I love you a little more equally than the others," Usagi said, smiling, before she said her goodbyes and put the phone down. It was certain to her now: he didn't understand her, either. That would make going forward harder, but not impossible. She _knew_ she could bring about the future early. She knew that somehow, someway, she would be able to bring peace to the world. Usagi would be able to coat the world in love and leave no room for hate or evil to flourish.

First, though, she had to defeat Yoshihiro. Once he was gone, she knew would be able to change the world.

* * *

"Is this a private party, or can anyone join in?" Chizuru asked, standing in front of Asuna's group. Almost everyone looked up at the taller girl, smiling down at them. Sakurako looked up, her face innocent and naive of what was to come as she smiled at Chizuru.

"Your face still look funny," Ku noted.

"That may have been my fault," Konoka admitted, placing a hand to her cheek in slight embarrassment. "I can only heal injuries that are less than three minutes old. It's possible that some of Chizuru's injuries may have been older than that."

"Something like that," Chizuru smiled, before leaving over and stabbing the knife that had just dropped from her left sleeve into her waiting hand deep into Sakurako's chest. Without blinking, and before Sakurako let out a surprised yelp and toppled over backwards, clutching at the wound that spurted blood between her fingers, Chizuru had the knife withdrawn and spun, catching the side of Konoka's throat before Setsuna could clear her katana from its scabbard. The blade continued in its arc, Chizuru making the most of the momentum she had going from the swing, and allowed the blade to bite into Ku Fei's stomach before whipping it out and spinning back to dodge the push that a surprised Asuna gave in return.

Setsuna lunged forward with her katana stabbing forward in a tight, controlled movement, but Chizuru was already moving again from where she had dodged Asuna, ducking under the extended blade and kicking upwards with the side of her foot. She caught Setsuna on the chin, the smaller girl's head snapping back as she staggered back before managing to block the incoming knife with her katana a moment before Chizuru changed her angle of attack again, and sliced her blade through Konoka's forearm.

On the ground, Sakurako struggled to sit upright, her hand ineffectively trying to stem the flow of blood from the wound on her chest. She looked up, uncomprehendingly, as Chizuru stood above her, for the moment still, but with an eerie smile on her face that looked... evil. Darker than anything Sakurako had ever believed possible on a human's face.

Dimly, she heard Misa bellow seemingly from a great distance, but all she could see was the triumphant smile on Chizuru's face.

"Why..."

"_Adeat_!" Asuna yelled, her harisen flashing into existence as she ran at Chizuru, the folded fan weapon held horizontally to the ground ready to be used in whatever way Asuna needed at the moment she struck.

Chizuru turned, her long auburn hair spinning behind her in belated movement, and she dropped low, both arms held out at the sides. "Physical combat is more Kaede's thing, but I'm good enough to take you."

The fake accent was gone. "Mana?" Asuna asked, hesitating just a moment long enough for 'Chiruzu' to take a swing at Asuna, and although Asuna dodged the worst of it, the tip of the blade sliced into Asuna's cheek and tore into her earlobe before Mana retracted the blade to be held closer to her body again. Asuna fell back, the pain in her ear causing her to back up and reassess what was going on with the other girls.

Movement out of the corner of Mana's eye attracted another stab, this time into Ku's chest. The short girl looked more stunned than she had when Mana sliced into her stomach, and fell again. This time, she didn't stir.

She turned back to Sakurako, as Setsuna pushed herself to her feet, leaning heavily on her scabbard to hold herself up. Chachamaru was approaching, but damaged, and would probably not be so much of a threat after Zazie had damaged the robot. Evangeline, though, on the other hand, was something else entirely. Mana had yet to see her involved in this fight, so she could either be sitting back to see how others would react – entirely within her character – or distracted, or even on her way into battle right now. And indeed, she heard the thin squeaks of bats, the rushing of air under their wings.

Oh yes, Evangeline was on her way.

Sakurako was below her, being held by Misa in her arms, the tips of her purple hair being coated in dark red blood from Sakurako's wound. "No no no no..."

Mana smiled, and picked Sakurako up from Misa's hands, pulling the girl upright with her left hand while readying her knife with the other. But a moment later, she felt a sharp, stabbing pain in her left forearm, and the end of her arm separated from her. She could feel something sharp on the open wound, spraying blood like a miniature geyser. Sakurako fell, and as she intersected a direct line between Mana's ruined stump of an arm and Misa, she simply sliced in two as if cut by the sharpest of blades.

Misa's pupils shrank in horror, and she pulled back, getting to her feet as she scrambled away from Mana.

Asuna stared at the bisected body on the ground unable to find the words to describe how she felt. She looked up in horror at Misa, as she retreated from the professional assassin.

Mana took another look at her left arm, ending abruptly now in a stump, with the hand on the ground before her, twitching in a nervous reflex. "It was you..." she whispered. Damn, how could she be so stupid? There was nothing special about Sakurako, nothing that screamed out magical girl. Magical girls were always unassuming characters, people who didn't already stand out fantastically in some respected. Well, usually. But they were normal, average, having dreams they couldn't always articulate.

That described Misa quite well.

Not knowing that, she had hit the wrong target. Now, the magical girl was waking up in Misa's panic, and that whole slicing-off-of-the-arm-thing that she had going for her, that didn't bode well for combat now. Mana retreated, making sure not to step back into one of the other combatants. She still needed to thin the crowd before she could make her escape, though, and the blood she'd leave behind – while immediately dangerous to her from blood loss – would also leave a trail until she could see to it. She took note of Misa's retreat, watching as small tufts of dirt exploded behind her in a pattern as if something was hitting the ground. Only a moment's glance revealed there to be at least four, possibly six of the invisible limbs. _What is she?_ Mana thought, before turning to her left.

Nodoka and Chisame were in her way that way. She could take both of them out of the fight while making her escape, but she only had moments.

Misa stopped her backwards movement, and Mana could see the fear turn to anger.

Decision time over, Mana stepped to the left. A moment later, she was running, her knife thrown true straight into Nodoka's chest. The librarian fangirl gave a small yelp before falling over backwards clawing at the hilt of the knife protruding from her right breast. Mana was there in a moment and helped by grabbing the hilt and pulling, the knife doing more damage on the way out. Behind her, Asuna sprung into action again, bringing her harisen up for an attack as she jumped, screaming.

Behind them all, Mana heard Konoka mutter, "_Adeat_," in Setsuna's arms.

No time for that now, though. Damn. Some of the girls would be healed, if not all. The problem was, between her and freedom was –

Chisame screamed in panic as Mana turned towards her, and swung her fist up automatically to attack the threat before her.

Mana screamed as something sharp gave her a lead injection to one of her eyes. She staggered back, dropping her knife to pull the offending object out – it was Chisame's makeup pencil. _It had to have been in my eye_, Mana thought stupidly, staring at the pencil covered in a translucent fluid with her good right eye. Something exploded in the ground next to her feet, and she turned, as if in a dream. Time seemed to be moving so slowly. She saw Misa, seeming to float before her, four impressions in the ground around her that seemed to suggest that she wasn't floating as much as carried on invisible limbs. The rest of her left arm joined her hand on the ground, and Mana barely felt anything from it. _I'm in shock,_ she realised, forcing herself to move, but her limbs wouldn't respond. No wonder; her right arm was also on the ground. A moment later, she toppled to the ground, and she heard Asuna screaming in the background, S_top it Misa! She's already down! She can't hurt anyone else!_ But after a moment, she couldn't even hear that.

"Misa! Stop it, Misa!" Asuna grabbed Misa's shoulder, pulling her around to face her. She was scared, and she could see that Misa was, as well, possibly more so than Asuna had ever been in her entire life. Her eyes were small dots in a sea of white, her face was tense and pale, sweating. Her body trembled, but with fear or barely repressed rage, Asuna wasn't sure.

What she was sure of, though, was that Misa was still floating just off the ground, swinging slightly as whatever was holding her up swayed and shifted. She couldn't see anything, but she hadn't seen anything when Mana had been carved up, either.

Asuna refused to look down at the chunks of meat that lay at her feet, refused to try and put them together into a person. "Misa, you need to calm down! You're safe. It's okay. We're all safe! Look, Konoka's healing the others right now. Come on, let's go see her. Let's just... calm down."

A flight of bats dropped from the sky and reassembled into Evangeline's teenaged form. "What happened here?" she asked, taking a step forward before she saw the carnage. "_What happened here?_" she repeated, her voice more insistent, more demanding.

"Mana happened," Satomi spoke up in a trembling voice, her eyes locked on Misa.

Chisame stared at her hands, then bolted for the tree line and heaved her last meal up. Eva saw the ghost girl that had become attached to the glasses-girl patting her on the shoulder.

"And then Misa happened," Chachamaru finished, helping Setsuna with Konoka, the healing mage's wounds healed. She was working on Ku Fei at the moment, Nodoka beside her breathing weakly but otherwise okay, but Konoka was still weak herself and in danger of falling over.

Evangeline stared at the girl with Asuna, floating slightly. She frowned, and stalked forward. Misa's head snapped around, her eyes still small with fear, and something whizzed towards Evangeline. Her right shoulder exploded into a dark mass a moment later, but the vampire continued walking, the mass bubbling up into a cloud of bats before reforming into her shoulder. Misa made another two strikes, with Evangeline similarly recovering from each strike, but Eva made it through without effort. Asuna was impressed. If she was really this strong, which in the current circumstances was probably more affected by Asuna's own shock and fear, she seemed to be more powerful and badass even than her fight with Fate only a week before. How had Negi beaten her at the school?

When the vampire reached Misa, she grabbed the girl with both arms, and pulled her downwards sharply. Her feet touched the ground, and Evangeline peered into the girl's eyes, turning her head one way and then the other with a hand on her jaw. Finally, she reached up and pulled her hair back.

"She has horns?" Asuna blurted out.

Indeed she did, small horns that lay close to her skull. Misa jerked back, trying to pull away from Evangeline, but Eva simply pulled a hand back and slapped Misa across her face. "Snap out of it, you fool. What do you think you're doing? Get a grip!"

Misa's head snapped around, in Asuna's direction. Asuna saw Misa's face relax, and her eyes calm. Pressure Asuna only became aware of because of its absence disappeared. "Wha... what happened?" Misa asked, before bursting into tears.

Evangeline looked ill-suited to the action, and didn't seem at ease, but pulled Misa into a hug. "Come. Calm down. You and I, we need to talk."

Asuna watched as Eva led Misa away. Chisame returned to the group, away from Mana's dismembered corpse, while Chachamaru left Konoka's side and began recovering Mana's pieces. She glanced over at Konoka, working now desperately on Sakurako, before heading over.

"I can't heal her," Konoka whispered to Asuna when she arrived, frantically working her artifact's fans to try and put the broken girl back together. "She was wounded less than three minutes ago, but I can't heal her." Her voice held the edge of tired desperation in it, and Asuna wondered whether her friend was alright.

Sakurako's good hand reached up, and weakly grabbed Asuna's ankle. She mouthed something, and Asuna got down, taking Sakurako's hand in hers as she leaned in. "Yes?"

The cheerleader whispered something, and then shuddered before falling completely still, her last breath escaping from her mouth with a sound like the last gentle puff of wind after a cyclone. Asuna stayed still for a minute, feeling tears prick at her eyes and roll down her cheeks. She reached up, and closed Sakurako's eyes one last time before standing. Konoka and Setsuna also stood, the swordswoman holding her friend up.

"What did she say?" Setsuna asked.

"_I'm so sorry but_ _It was fun,_" Asuna said, before she wondered why, no matter how bad she felt, she couldn't cry.

* * *

Ayumu stared at the television screen in the common room, as monsters came and went, watching what had to be the final, climactic battle for Battle Royale. One of the school girls had just turned into some kind of armoured monster, fighting an invisible man, another schoolgirl had stolen a friend's face and gone on a rampage before being killed herself by some kind of magical girl. Maybe by a monster, even, judging by the way the assassin had been torn to pieces. But in that fight at least, the group had people who could heal others and was putting their players back on the field.

The first fight wasn't going so well, though.

As if she could see her General, Ayumu stared intently at the screen while no one else was around. The catgirl would tell her if anyone else approached the room, at which point Ayumu would flick back to her airheaded persona. The others would stay for a few minutes, but the beginnings of a discussion from Ayumu was normally enough to make them retreat to one of the other televisions in the base.

She supposed she should be watching this with Natsumi, up in the command centre, as that's what Ranma would have wanted, but she wasn't sure that was what Natsumi would want. The technological girl, locked into her dream state and forcefully running the base's computer network, seemed to resent Ayumu's presence. Nothing concrete to work with there, and she helped whenever asked to further Ranma's plans whatever his ultimate outcome may be, and she helped with protecting Ranma and his presence on the island as well, but still, the comatose girl gave Ayumu a bad vibe.

At least she'd managed to CG in a different outfit over the "Forest Fairy" Sailor Saturn. Things almost came undone then, but Natsumi had reacted quickly and Ranma's secret was again safe.

But now... Ranma was fighting for his life, and he couldn't go all-out without dooming everyone on the island to death by Umiko's hand.

Unless...

She smiled craftily, then relaxed her expression in case one of the other monsters in the room noticed. A moment later, she stood and slipgated out to the command centre.

Natsumi picked up her presence as soon as she materialised. No one else was around, but the screen flicked on to the bound girl's left, showing the fight with the empowered Zazie Rainyday.

"That's what I've come to talk to you about," Ayumu said, slipping out of her idiot persona. "He can't fight to the best of his abilities. You know this as well as I do."

There were no words or movement from the girl, but Ayumu felt Natsumi agreed. "You don't like me much. You think I'm working against our General-in-common, but I'm not. I can't prove that to you, though. But I need you to work with me now... he's crippled, fighting at less than what he's capable of. I don't know how to make this work so the one who works against him doesn't know he's there. She's watching, you know. Watching to see when he strikes the island. She knows he can't stay away, knows he will go there. But! She doesn't know he _is_ there. His lieutenants are working with him, here, fixing things so little slips don't get found and the work he is neglecting is continued. As far as we're all concerned, Ranma is on a training mission, somewhere in China, probably. But he's masking himself, and that's troubling Umiko. If she gets the slightest hint that he's there, she'll take her forces and descend on that island. That's what Ranma's trying to avoid. That's why he can't power up. This girl he's fighting, she's pretty strong, but at full strength, Ranma is better, faster, more experienced, and she couldn't stop him. There's just one problem –"

Something shifted outside the room, and Ayumu's face slid into her well-rehearsed vacant expression and tone of voice. "- and that's that we don't have any rice cakes. Do you know where we can buy some?"

"What are you doing here?" Umiko asked as she entered the room, eyes narrowed suspiciously. She glanced at the immobile girl wired up into the command centre's computers. "Why aren't you helping fix your next _Terrorhawk_?"

"The next Terrorhawk is undergoing final assembly. Did you know that we used over twenty thousand screws in its construction? We did a lot of screwing."

"I bet that kept you busy."

"Oh, it did," Ayumu agreed. "My fingers are so sore."

"And what does that have to do with rice cakes?"

"Rice cakes are good for celebrations! The new Terrorhawk will be ready to roll tomorrow. Celebrations are also good for sore fingers."

"You're up to something. You're making sense," Umiko observed.

_Damn._ "I always make sense :|"

"You're always drooling and gurning and can't keep to a conversational topic."

"Yes :D~"

"Except you weren't before."

"It was because I've been screwing so much :("

"Really."

"Really :-["

Umiko regarded Ayumu for a few moments more through narrowed eyes before sighing and giving up. "You shouldn't be up here."

"I was looking for General Ranma :P" Ayumu replied. "Then I saw the TV. Your show is going good. Like Kira's Show." Unable to help herself, Umiko preened at the praise. "It is more dastardly and evil than anything the records tell about the last Dark Kingdom invasions of Earth :D"

"I try," Umiko said, before scowling again. "And get out of this command centre!"

"Oooookay," Ayumu answered before slipgating out.

Alone in the centre now, aside from the comatose seated form of Natsumi, Umiko frowned. That girl had to be doing something up here. She checked the consoles, but nothing was touched. Several of the monitors around the room showed views of the island, taken from the television programme. One showed a monstrous girl in white bone-like armour fighting against thin air. A second one showed the child teacher in the background of a shot put a knife down onto the stretcher he had been staying very close to, and hold something else long and thin aloft. A third showed the largest group of girls on the island, with two dead girls on the ground. Interesting. A closer look showed one to be the assassin that Umiko had been anxiously hoping would create more of a spectacle. A pity, though, but ultimately not unexpected. While she had had high hopes for the girl, Umiko had thought someone would take her out before she got too wrapped up in things. She was too intense, too focussed, and while she was a brilliant fighter, some of the other people on the island were just stronger, more powerful, and could take whatever she could give out and then some.

Take that teenage girl in the leather dominatrix getup, for example. Umiko had seen her vanish from the island in the first hours of the show. She'd then seen her use magic to get back to the island three days later, once things were too far gone to end bloodlessly. And, watching the picture-in-picture display of the fight that had gone on moments before, even as the girl led another girl away from the group, she watched parts of the dominatrix explode into clouds of roiling bats before reforming.

Vampires? Umiko snorted at the thought. More likely parlour tricks or some other kind of magic.

She glanced back at Natsumi, and grinned savagely, her feline canines shining brightly in the harsh light of the command centre.

There was no change from the girl hooked up to the computers, but a moment later, the base went into lockdown, all external sensors and senses shut off, slipgates were curtailed and the television feeds shut down.

* * *

Sailor Ceres took a blow to the jaw, spinning her head around and making the world spin crazily. She staggered back, shaking her head to try and clear it of the fuzziness that threatened to pull her down into a well of darkness, which she knew she would never come back from.

Zazie swung again, this time with her blade instead of her fist, and Ceres leapt up and rolled over the swinging blade as if it was a high jump, but continuing her roll so as to turn the move into a flip once she had cleared the blade's edge and returned to a standing position.

Maybe she had been too hasty to bid Hotaru leave; she could certainly use Sailor Saturn's power, even at the reduced rates it had been at.

Static flickered at the edge of Ceres's gaze, and she nearly lost a limb by shifting to glance at it. Stupid! She dodged the blade, but one of the spines on Zazie's back spat explosive shells at her, one catching her on the hip. Ceres was thrown backwards into the cliff face again, Zazie stalking after her, her blade making swishing noises as she swung the blade around.

The static flared up again in the corner of Ceres's eyes, and then as if by magic, a small character appeared there, built up from a number of polygons. It was about as detailed as a low-budget game character, angular features, no curves and a distinct lack of animation. Ceres would have recognised her, even if she didn't have a VR headset resting on her head. "Natsumi?" she squeaked in surprise. The figure mouthed something but Ceres heard nothing. Again, the character mouthed something, but Ceres couldn't hear anything at all, and the figure was too small and indistinct to lip-read.

Zazie stabbed forward with her blade, and Ceres sidestepped before slipping up the extended sword and backhanding Zazie across the face. The girl's head snapped to one side, but her body refused to move. As she leaped backwards into a reverse-flip, Ceres heard something in her ears.

At first, she thought it was the thin whistle of Zazie's blade slicing through the air, but a moment later, the sound clarified itself into static, modulated in time with the mouthing of the avatar in her vision. Each time the character mouthed words, there was a burst of static in Ceres's ears. Each iteration was the same, leading Ceres to believe whatever it was that Natsumi was saying to her, it was being repeated, over and over.

As Ceres dodged and sidestepped and jumped and kicked and punched and let loose with the occasional energy blast, Zazie continued slicing at her, and the sound continued to resolve itself slowly in her ears. "_...or cov... ...n can un... ...l po..._"

"I can't hear you!" Ceres growled through gritted teeth. This fight was starting to drag on too long. Without being able to power up, Ceres was unable to match Zazie, and only had an advantage in speed. She thought, though, that even that might be little more than an illusion, as a cat played with a mouse.

A cat. Great. The one thing she could use right now, and Ceres bet there were none on the island whatsoever.

The sound suddenly clicked into place, still covered in static but now understandable. "Sensor coverage down. Can unleash full potential."

"What?" Ceres asked, caught off-guard by the comment.

Without a pause, the automated message repeated, and repeated. "Sensor coverage down. Can unleash full potential. Sensor coverage down. Can –"

Zazie brought the blade down towards Ceres's neck, suddenly unprotected while Ceres was turned away from the other fighter while she digested the news. She snapped a hand up in a stop signal. "Wait!" Zazie's blade stopped dead, and hovered less than a centimetre from Ceres's throat. "Run that by me again."

"Sensor coverage down. Can unleash full potential."

"Message received," Ceres replied, unsure if Natsumi could even hear her.

The avatar gave a brief smile. "FAB." And then it winked out.

Natsumi. She was in there somewhere, still, trapped in the motionless body back at Yoshihiro's headquarters. Ceres knew it, had known from the start, but aside from monitors switching over to relevant feeds, there was no external sign of Natsumi's mind or personality. Even this wasn't a direct appearance... Ceres got the idea it was a pre-programmed message, intended only for her and only in just such a situation.

The sensors were off? Great. Anything that happened now was free from Umiko's observation: Ceres had no doubt Natsumi wouldn't have sent such a message unless Umiko's interference was curtailed.

She stood, with her hand still raised, for a few more moments. Then, the full realisation hit home. She grinned, roguishly and roughly, excited by the prospect. Ceres looked up at Zazie, refocussing her eyes. "Okay. You're gonna get your wish. I've just got the all-clear. No eyes watchin'. No one ta interfere. Just you... an' me... an' then I'll get everyone home." Sailor Ceres snapped both hands down, palms facing forwards with her fingers extended, then separated her feet, standing tall for the first time in the last couple of minutes. She grinned again, savagely, before tossing her head back and allowing power to course through her body in thick, black waves. Her fuku, a mixture of grey and white, darkened to black, and golden lace crept around the hem of her skirt and the seams on her shoulders. Her boots darkened and hardened, tiny gold lettering of a language neither Ceres nor Zazie could read patterned around the soles of the boots and around her ankles. The gloves on Ceres's hands and forearms exploded into ridged armour, looking like a spiky version of a crocodile's back, while her tiara ran down the sides of her face and solidified, framing her cheeks and jaw, while from the two points between her eyes and ears melted upwards in delicate golden horns. Ceres's skin paled slightly as well, making the armoured fuku stand out even more starkly.

Zazie stepped back as raw power of competing types gushed from the point where Ceres stood, raising her zanpakutou to help protect her from the waves of energy that threatened to engulf her. Once the wave died down, she stared at Ceres, her eyes wide with surprise behind her mask.

Ceres regarded herself curiously, holding out first one arm and then the other, checking out the new armoured form. "Well, this is new," she remarked. "Different from the black suit, anyway. And they said it would be the last suit I'd ever need..." Ceres snorted.

Without another word, Zazie pushed off with a foot, rushing at Sailor Ceres, sword outstretched to impale the enhanced senshi. Ceres simply batted the sword away with one hand and delivered a sound blow to the bone-armoured girl's chin, snapping Zazie's head back and throwing her across the clearing. With her other hand, Ceres dusted bone dust and particles from her armoured knuckles and then blew gently across them before wiggling her fingers to see how they felt. "Wow. I _like_ this." She glanced up again at Zazie. "You're going to have to go all out. I know you're still holding back. I know you can go harder. But I'm pretty sure not much harder. You don't look right. You don't feel right. Right now, you're bursting with energy, and it's streaming from you like a tap turned all the way on, but you don't have an unlimited source of water behind you, if you get my drift. You're gonna run out, and soon. Me, on the other hand," Ceres said, turning one of her gauntlets over to examine the back of it, "I'm being powered by two parallel universes, as well as my own inner strength multiplied by both my transformations. An' as you'd know, I'm pretty strong and skilled for a normal human." Ceres smiled, thinly. "Imagine me as a god."

Zazie paused for a moment, before firing both the spines on her back. Ceres swatted the bomblets away, annoyed, and then swatted Zazie's follow-through attack with her blade less than a moment later with her other hand. "Come on! Stronger! Harder! Faster! I can do all three at once!" Zazie's blade struck home, a short sharp thrust to Ceres's stomach, but while the blade bit, it didn't slide in nearly deep enough, and all she received was a knee to the gut, momentarily winding her as she spun away.

Ceres followed through with a devastating barrage of kicks and blows, delivered at speeds faster than the unenhanced human eye could follow. Zazie was able to dodge about half the attacks thrown her way, and another quarter she managed to turn into only glancing hits, but she was losing chunks of armour. At one point, Ceres reached out with a hand and simply yanked one of her back-mounted cannons straight off, the bone armour crunching as it came apart under the altered senshi's assault.

More armour fell away, and Zazie found those parts less targeted; it was evident that Sailor Ceres only wanted to tear her from her unliving shell. That was something she could use.

Zazie moved with the punches and kicks, a little surprised that Ceres wasn't firing off energy beams anymore, but on second thought, decided that Ceres would likely vaporise anything nearby if she did with the levels of power she was pumping out right now. If Zazie had more than a moment, she could see her adversary's skin flecked with tiny points of light, lines zig-zagging between them.

"I could smash planets!" Ceres growled out as she took a wild swing, all attempt at subtlety in her fighting gone for the moment. Zazie readied herself, feeling a huge chunk of armour ripped off her left breast, thrown away to join the rest of the discarded material. That left a large amount of armour stripped bare from that region. As soon as Zazie had a chance, after two wild swings from Ceres, she shifted her zanpakutou to her left hand, held away from her body and back slightly, ready to bring it forward at a moment's notice. In the meantime, Zazie shielded herself as much as she could with her right forearm – it had been healed since she transformed, but was still no good at doing much more than deflecting the worst of the punches and kicks sent her way.

With sudden realisation, Ceres stopped dead, a look of horror on her face. "My god, I could tear reality in half."

At that moment, Zazie struck, stepping forward in a blur of motion, her blade sinking deeply into Ceres's stomach. Ceres didn't move, her expression still shocked. Then she looked down. She prodded the blade with an armoured finger. "That's never happened before. I usually fall down or bleed or something."

But Zazie could see Ceres was bleeding, just energy, something she knew the other girl could see... just not with her eyes viewing it as a normal human, which was how she appeared to be looking at the wound now. Zazie knew something was going on in the girl's head, but not what; she certainly wasn't here, and even more certainly wasn't concerned about the blade poking directly through the centre of her stomach. She didn't know whether she should retract the blade or not, and stood there before the senshi, paused, waiting to see what Ceres's next move was.

Certainly, she was excited to fight against someone who could pose a threat, but Sailor Ceres unbound as she was now was stronger than Zazie by entire magnitudes of strength. It made Zazie nervous. She was definitely scared, and like most people didn't want to die, but had wanted to fight against someone she thought was an equal.

Ceres was more than equal, though. In this state, she drew in light from her surroundings, made the forest clearing seem dim and shadowy by comparison. She shone, but aside from the cracks of light, not visibly. Her spiritual strength, her inner core of power, burned brighter than a supernova, a roiling mass of conflicting energies swallowing each other and regurgitating power, over and over. Whereas Ceres had been right, and Zazie only had access to a limited store of power in her lifetime, Sailor Ceres's powerbase was constantly replenishing itself. That was why she healed so fast. That was why she never stayed down for long. That was why there was always something higher, something more powerful. Every time Ceres hit a plateau, her power swallowed itself and rebuilt itself in a stronger form.

It shouldn't have been possible, but Zazie was watching it happen right before her very eyes.

The other thing that shouldn't have been possible as Zazie knew it was that over a power level of that size, there should have been no controlling it. Ceres's spirit should have consumed itself years ago and Ceres should have died, but instead somehow the young woman had grabbed it, warped it, tied it into chains that allowed her to control it. And that was what she was doing right now.

Zazie could see the visible energy bursting from Ceres's skin, and while it should have eaten up the comparatively fragile flesh it leaked from her skin, rising in a yellowish glow from her body. It blew outwards, then rippled upwards in waves, giving a paler hue to Ceres's hair. To someone who couldn't pick individual energy patterns, it would almost look as if Sailor Ceres's red hair had suddenly burst into a rich golden colour, waving upwards with the force of the rolling energy waves.

Ceres was still looking at the sword, and poked it experimentally. She glanced up at Zazie now, her face composed again, actions small and delicate as if the very world itself was fragile. "Are we done?" Zazie nodded. "Good. Take your sword back. Change back. We're going down to your school friends, and I'm taking you home. Understood?" Zazie nodded again, and withdrew her blade from Ceres's stomach. Once Zazie had dropped her armour, Ceres let out a breath Zazie hadn't known she was holding, and the energy waves relaxed, the armour turning into ribbons and flowing back into Ceres's grey and white fuku, undamaged after their fight. "No more fighting, right? I'm not here to kill any of you. I'm just wanting to get you all home again. Okay?"

Zazie nodded, her painted face impassive, but inside she was relieved Sailor Ceres didn't want to take this any further. She stowed her zanpakutou in her cloak of darkness, and let it vanish beneath her school clothes. She was calm now. There had been a fight; Zazie had lost. Sailor Ceres could have gone on, but Zazie couldn't. Without hesitation, she leapt for the skies, heading towards the rest of the class. A moment later, with a shakier deep breath being let out and thanks being offered to any gods listening that Zazie hadn't actually killed anyone on the island, Ceres followed.

* * *

Setsuna scrambled for the back-up time gate in the crater, her feet slipping on the loose soil and rock around the dig site. Behind her, she could hear an approaching thump of footsteps from a machine much larger than herself, and forced herself to keep her eyes on the gate. There would be a control system down there, and senshi or not at the moment, the gate should still recognise her as the potential or former Senshi of Time and therefore activate at her touch.

That was the theory she was counting on.

She felt through the ground an intense vibration, and a moment later a Valkyrie flew past her, in battroid mode, arms and legs flailing as vernier thrusters attempted to gain some control over the sudden bout of flight. A moment later, Chao stepped between Setsuna and the gate, striding after the tall robot.

Over the comm links, Setsuna heard a high-pitched squeal that broke off into static, and someone else yell out, "Sailor Halley!" as Setsuna saw a massive arm suddenly raise above the rim of the crater and release its clenched fist, something much smaller and shaped like the top half of a person go flying high into the air. Energy attacks pelted the armoured giant, but the semi-mystical armour binding the organic interior took far less damage than Setsuna would have thought.

All this she saw and heard while running for the gate. Only a hundred metres now. The fastest man in the world could do that in less than ten seconds, in a full gravity, but Setsuna wasn't in an Earth gravity, nor was she particularly fit or fast, and she was encumbered by the jumpsuit she wore.

Another giant footfall behind her. And another. The Valkyrie was gaining. A sudden shadow sweeping in from her right alerted her to the hand of the machine swinging in to capture her, but she dropped to the ground, and the mass of composites and complex hydraulics passed overhead harmlessly. Setsuna scrambled to her feet again and bolted for the gate.

She reached it, and touched it with a bare hand, the stone of the gate feeling warm to her touch, a by-product of chronoton cycling in the upper surface matrix, she knew. That meant the gate was active. It would work. With a deft touch, she began touching what appeared to be random sections of the rock face, subsurface lights flashing for a moment under her fingertips. It was an old gate, obviously the first prototype made in the forges of Mars under direction from the academies of Mercury and the temporal sense of the priests of Pluto, and the start-up sequence was complicated and time-consuming, but the gate stepped up production of chronotons and began emitting visible flashes of Cherenkov radiation around the gate perimeter.

The Valkyrie recovered behind her, and made to step forward again, but Chao was there a moment later, grabbing Hikaru's plane and throwing the robot into the crater wall. A moment later, the other Valkyrie crashed into Chao's back.

"Why are you doing this?" Chao yelled in frustration at the second Valkyrie. "We're sisters!"

Klan refused to reply for the moment as she triggered a spread of reaction ammunition from what was a nose-mounted gun when in the craft's plane mode, but in the robot was part of the lower torso. The bullets stitched across Chao's back and stomach as she turned to face the other craft, tearing at material and leaving small red welts on Chao's skin, but nothing else.

Chao yelped in momentary pain, and swatted at Klan's battroid, which danced back out of range. "You forget, sister, that those things only hurt senshi." She bent forward at the hips, leaning towards Klan's battroid with her fists out wide. "And if you're going to try and hurt your baby sister, if you're really going to use anti-senshi weaponry on her, then I'd better give you a senshi to fight. Hyakutake dusty iceball – make up!" Chao's bodysuit exploded into ribbons and reformed in a Zentraedi-sized fuku in an aqua colour scheme. The sixty metre senshi whirled around, dipping down low to swing her right leg out as she pivoted on her left foot, catching Klan's battroid around the ankles and knocking it over as Klan fired, reaction munitions firing harmlessly into the skies. The Valkyrie righted itself easily enough, jetting up to hover just above the ground for a few moments before additional hatches opened and reaction missiles locked onto Sailor Hyakutake. "Oh come on, sis, you don't think those pokey little mini-missiles are going to do much to me other than make me annoyed, do you?"

"I still have to try," Klan replied through gritted teeth, eyes picking out multiple points of target across Hyakutake's body in flickering red diamonds before the slightest twitch of her thumb triggered sixteen missiles from her hip launchers. The missiles exploded outwards and each independently-targeted warhead locked onto Hyakutake as they zoomed away from both Valkyrie and target in an automatic pattern to confuse any anti-missile systems that may have been in-theatre before rolling around and racing for their targets. Of the sixteen missiles, Hyakutake managed to destroy ten in an energy wave defensive ability, was able to hit another two from the skies before they could arm, and the last four impacted – one on her right hip, the second on the right side of her stomach, the third on her right forearm and the fourth was able to hit her on the side of the head, stunning her for a moment before she shook her head and wiped the blood away with her left hand.

"One shot, sis. One shot. That's all you get." Hyakutake brought her hands together. "Burning cold compression!" A ball of brilliant blue light so strong it appeared white appeared between Hyakutake's hands, before she flung it out at the Valkyrie. Caught momentarily off-guard, Klan was unable to move, but her Valkyrie was pushed aside at the last moment by a badly-damaged battroid.

She recognised the colours before everything was washed out in the flash. Hikaru's plane. As if in slow motion, she watched the light eat his Valkyrie away, and in her imagination, she could see Hikaru's face, slowly dissolving in white light until it was no more. She articulated a scream, a howl of pain, and a moment later her battroid exploded from within, as something much larger expanded from the wreckage.

Klan had triggered her own maclonisation switch.

Slightly taller than Hyakutake, and catching the younger Meltrandi by surprise, her raw cry of anger fuelled the punch that smashed into Hyakutake's stomach and flung her against the other wall of the crater.

Now Hyakutake felt panic. Of the two, Klan had always been the stronger fighter, the more experienced combatant. Even as children when strength hadn't mattered as much due to their age, Klan had won any fights easily through superior tactics and skill. Even as a senshi, this was what Hyakutake feared, that her sister – the consummate and dispassionate soldier – was pissed off enough to make this very serious, instead of the headbutting she had thought they had been doing up until then. Hyakutake hadn't really thought her sister was out to kill her, and she hadn't been out to kill her sister – Klan's battroid had been in far better condition than the pile of scrap that had shoved her out of the way, and would have survived. But now... now it seemed all bets were off.

Klan leapt onto her, knees pinning down Hyakutake's arms to either side of her hips, and she swung, punching at Hyakutake's face with powerful, heavy strokes, her shoulders helping the power of the swing. While Hyakutake was a senshi, and a powerful senshi due to her size, she was still a minor senshi, and the pain, while not immediately injurious or fatal, was approaching overwhelming.

With a roar of her own pain and fear, she heaved Klan off with all her strength, throwing the larger Meltrandi to the other side of the crater. Klan stood, her arms hanging low and loose as an Evangelion approached the crater wall behind her with a progressive blade extended and marching towards the fuku'ed Meltrandi.

The Evangelion didn't make it very far, as a moment later, the armour on its legs parted as if cut with an incredibly sharp blade, and the monster toppled over with thick red ichor exploding out of both stumps and feet. Seconds later, the rest of the Evangelion exploded into component parts, with internal fluids washing any nearby combatants.

Klan didn't look. She leapt at Hyakutake again, and was thrown back again, but before she could get up, a purple-haired senshi appeared behind her, hovering in the air with a slightly disturbed smile on her face and blank eyes that revealed nothing before Klan's skull was bisected in a similar manner to how the Evangelion had fallen to pieces.

"SaIlor Shiva, NOOO!"

Shiva merely smiled, and returned to battle, Klan's giant body spasming as its nervous system attempted to process the fact the brain had disappeared from the top of the spinal column and the body was now operating with no higher functions or instruction. Hyakutake took a step towards the corpse, before she remembered what she was supposed to be doing, and looked down at Setsuna, standing next to the gate. Setsuna was saying something to her, shouting it up over the din of battle in the thin atmosphere. She couldn't hear her, so she triggered her miclonisation system and shrunk down to her smaller form.

Setsuna's words died on her lips as she saw the smaller girl before her, pale and swaying. "Are you all right?" she asked, concerned.

"That... that was my sister."

"Who was that senshi?" Setsuna asked, turned back to where Shiva had disappeared over the lip of the crater. They watched as a passing Valkyrie was shredded as if running into invisible chainsaws.

"Sailor Shiva. Who we're trying to stop from awakening. She killed my sister. I wasn't going to kill her, I just wanted to stop her. Beat her for once."

"We can go through shortly. The gate just needs the final co-ordinates. You're sure this is when we should go? Exactly a thousand years?"

Hyakutake nodded, dumbly. "That's what the history books say. That Battle Royale ended a couple of days from now, a thousand years ago." She let her transformation slip, dropping back into her civilian guise in a flurry of pink ribbons.

Setsuna pressed several more pieces of the rock, feeling the power of the ancient device stir willingly beneath her fingertips. More blue bursts of Cherenkov radiation flashed out from the centre of the gate's upright arms as the event horizon of a wormhole struggled to break through to visible dimensions from the sub-microscopic quantum world it normally inhabited. Chao looked up at the gate, trying to keep her attention off what was behind her. "It's big."

"I know the Mecurians wanted to go with a giant spinning ring that could traverse space as well as time through a series of lockable coordinates, and the Martians wanted a flat spinning panel to project the wormhole onto, but the ring was impractical as it required a separate navigational console and that black and white spinning panel just looked tacky in the temple," Setsuna replied, sensing Chao wanted something other than her sister's death on her mind. Frankly, Setsuna was horrified by what had happened, and what was happening around her right now. It wasn't what the senshi stood for, not what they'd been assembled for millions of years ago and not why they had survived the end of the Moon Kingdom. They were supposed to be the hope for a better world, and perhaps they still were, Setsuna reflected, but the means by which they reached their end... the death toll so far had to be catastrophic, and once Setsuna went back in time, if all went right there would be countless further deaths, trillions upon trillions of life forms that would never have existed.

Then, she caught sight of Shiva flaying a Gundam into tiny pieces, before extracting the pilot and slicing him into pieces, and she thought perhaps non-existence for some people might not be such a bad idea after all.

"How much longer until it powers up?" Chao asked.

"Should only be a minute or two. This old gate is the original prototype, it seems, and while the gate itself is in good repair, the power source seems to have decayed over the eons." Setsuna shrugged. "I think we'll be fine, as much as I hate to say it." She didn't have to say why, as another Gundam fell to pieces.

Two more Evangelions quickly followed, before a blinding beam of light that whited out everything else blasted from deep space into the ground and Shiva disappeared. When the light faded, Shiva was no more, and there was a hole punched deep into the crust.

"SHIVA!" Setsuna heard Nemesis bellow across the comm, pain and sorrow evident in her voice. Even Chao turned around, looking saddened at the loss for a few moments with grief and anger fighting for control over her face.

"She was what she was," Chao allowed finally, "and it was a constant fight for her to retain control."

Nemesis appeared at the lip of the crater. "GO! GO! There's a Macross 20 sitting up there outside my range. It's going to drill-"

Nemesis didn't get the chance to finish as another finger of light stabbed down viciously, and she disappeared as well.

"No," Chao breathed. "Large-scale reaction weaponry. We can't defend against that. Only –"

Another lance stabbed down, and the comms were awash with reports of Jupiter's death a moment later.

"They're taking out the strongest senshi," Setsuna replied, turning back to the gate. "If only this thing would charge faster."

"It doesn't matter anymore," Chao replied, her heart feeling light with the knowledge it was all over, even as she slid to the ground, back against the gate. "We tried. We failed. We'll be gone in a moment, too." At Setsuna's horrified glance, she clarified. "We won't feel a thing. We'll just be – gone. As if we never existed. It's funny. I always thought I'd die alone, in some gloriously stupid battle because of my Zentraedi blood, taken down by an Evangelion armed with the Lance of Longinus. Well... I guess it looks like a lance, at least." She stared up into the sky, waiting.

But nothing came.

"Are they recharging?" Setsuna asked, eyeing the wormhole's growth as it turned inside out over and over, being forced into developing a macro-space event horizon large enough to admit a person.

"The Macross 20 can fire off a dozen shots without needing to pause. That was the beauty of the design."

"You sound like you admire the designers for what they're killing us with."

"Kind of. I _am_ Zentraedi. I do appreciate fighting and war and stuff."

There was a pin-prick of light, way up high. "They're a couple of million kilometres out. That's what Nemesis meant by being out of range. There's only two senshi who'd have the power to hit something that far out, and –"

A moment later, something erupted from the ground a kilometre away, red soil and rock showering the remaining senshi and Earth vehicles that hadn't pulled back out of range. Chao swore, getting to her feet quickly. "And we might have a chance," she finished.

Sailor Saturn, glowing brightly with released energy and armed with her Silence Glaive. Her attention was locked on the battleship far out in space, and she spun around almost lazily while bringing her Glaive down to point directly at the distant ship. "Binding Force!" A dozen ribbons erupted from the end of her Glaive, and grabbed something midway between the two fighters.

"Sailor Saturn!" Chao called out delightedly, despite herself. "Wow, she caught the reaction shot! How'd she –"

But Saturn wasn't finished yet. "Roche Limitation Escalation!" A gravitational wave blasted from her fingertips, visible only by the optical ripple effect it made distorting objects and light behind it. It bypassed the reaction shot and headed straight for the battleship, which broke into tiny fragments moments later – but not before it got off another shot.

Saturn gasped, unable to catch this one while her Glaive still had the other caught up.

"Saotome special attack number 2! Binding Force!" Another dozen ribbons exploded out of the ground from where Saturn had come from, and a moment later, a senshi in grey floated up, crackling power from her left hand while her right was held up, the ribbons generated from her palm. She turned to Saturn as she floated up beside her. "Feels good to be able to use this again." She flexed her hands.

"I just wanted it all to go away."

"Well, you didn't _make_ it go all away, which I'm really glad over."

"Oh god," Chao followed up her earlier enthusiasm with a cringe. "Sailor Ceres."

* * *

The last slice. The last piece of wood fell from the stick Boogie had provided, and finally the item felt complete. Magical. It felt _right_ to Negi.

He held the wand up experimentally, waved it from side to side feeling how it gave him strength. He nodded, this would work.

He turned back to the classroom, seeing who was in the room. Soldiers, a dozen of them, all armed with some kind of rifle he didn't recognise, but knew Mana would – would – no.

It came back to him. Mana's death. The latest in a long line of unnecessary deaths caused by the people in this room. Fire grew in his belly, a rage that refused to die down immediately, but Negi grabbed it, forced it into submission. Whatever happened, he couldn't go off half-cocked like some kind of rookie. He'd fought Fate recently – only a few days before, really – and nearly won. He'd achieved his goal in the fight, anyway. He wasn't a rookie, not anymore. He could not afford to kill these people, no matter how much he wanted to, wanted to make them pay for what they had done.

Yet, the anger remained.

How much of it was frustration and anger at himself, at his inability to protect his students? Negi didn't know. People outside, in Mahora, would all say, "He's only ten years old, forgive him, he couldn't have done anything." And perhaps that was true, Negi reflected, but at least he could have done _something_. He hadn't. He'd curled up in a little ball without a wand or a staff, without any of his pactio partners, and had done little but sleep while he recovered from the knock on the head he'd taken early on. He hadn't done anything, and he should have.

He looked up, his emotions boiling over inside and trying not to let them nor the tears that seemed to be gathering behind his eyes show to anyone else.

"This should be good," Boogie remarked casually as Negi slipped off the stretcher, wand in hand.

"He's only going to do what he has to," Chamo said from Negi's shoulder, looking back at the doll. "Right, big brother?"

Negi's wand snapped forward, pointing directly at Big Man, who had his back to the child teacher, before Negi's eyes darted around the classroom, taking in positions and fixing them in his head. One of the soldiers noted the expression, and began to raise his gun from where he had it pointing towards the floor.

Before he could get it high enough to cover Negi, the teacher barked, "Ras tel ma scir magister – flans exarmaAACHOO!" Negi's sneeze seemed to enhance the spell, and the resulting rush of wind exploding outwards from Negi's position not only ripped guns and equipment from the soldiers and production assistants in the room, but exploded their clothing into flower petals that flung themselves against the walls and windows before the glass cracked and blew outside.

The soldiers themselves weren't as modest about their nakedness as the television production crew was, and one of the female assistants clubbed another she'd just been talking to with a television monitor she grabbed, and another took refuge under the teacher's desk that had been pushed to the side of the room to allow for Big Man's production stage at the front of the room.

Big Man, true to form, was nonplussed with the sudden lack of clothing, wheeling around to one of the cameramen. "Get this! Make sure you get this all!"

The cameraman, a consummate professional and somehow still filming even after the rush of wind had threatened to blow his camera away, gave him a thumbs-up while he braced himself against a desk to prevent being blown over if the wind came back.

The soldiers recovered, and three leapt for Negi, but the boy mage side-stepped, and delivered a blow to their backs that hammered them into the ground. He'd worry about injuries at a later point; for now, he had to get out unharmed and unhindered.

And quickly, before someone had the bright idea of triggering the collars. He had to get to the girls quickly, get the collars off, before that happened. He just _had_ to. He had to save his students.

He eyed the soldiers.

"Hey, kid." Negi turned to face Boogie, who seemed to be smirking through his soft material face. "You go on. I'll stay behind, slow them down." Negi considered it for a moment, before nodding, and holding out his hands.

"Flet une vente! Flans saltatio pulverea!" Another sudden gust of wind exploded from Negi's outstretched wand, directly at one of the large windows in the side of the classroom. Even as the glass shattered, Negi's staff fell from behind one of the pieces of equipment next to the window, halting its downward movement and being propped up just below the window sill. Once the glass itself was smashed, the child teacher ran hard at the opening and leapt through it even as he grabbed his staff, ducking and rolling as he hit the ground on the other side. The soldiers outside, only now reacting to the events inside, began to swing around, but by this time Negi had already swung upwards with his staff and shot off into the night sky heading for his students.

Inside the classroom, Big Man rested his hands on the window sill, his nakedness still not a concern. "That's... that's... we're going to stomp all over Kira's World." He turned back to the production crew, excited. "Can you imagine it? We're going to blow this wide open! Magic! Real magic! Are we still live?"

"Ah... no," one of the assistants said, checking a damaged console. "Recording, but transmission has gone off line for the moment."

"And we got it all, right?" Big Man asked the cameraman. The cameraman gave him a thumbs up. "We're going to be rich!"

"You know, it's funny," came another voice. "I just signed on because a dark mage – _the_ dark mage – asked me to spring the kid. Looks good on the resume, you know. But still being alive and mobile, this is better. I guess the Maga Nosferatu still needs me for something, and this is as good a thing as any. It's like a prize!"

Big Man looked around, and found the kid teacher's stuffed toy addressing them all. He laughed, nervously. "It's got a speech chip, right?"

"Nah, I don't have a speech chip," Boogie replied. "But you should fear me, just as you fear those other toys. You," he gestured at the cameraman. "You keep filming and you make it out alive. Stop filming and you get what everyone else does. Understood?"

Soldiers now scrambled for weapons, but Big Man stood his ground. "I'm not afraid of you. You're just a toy."

Boogie's shadow seemed to extend out behind him weirdly, giving him a taller, thinner, lankier frame than that of his current form. "You're not afraid of me now," he remarked, before pulling out his carving knife. "But you will be. _You will be._" He leapt at Big Man, and the screaming started.

* * *

"Who's Sailor Ceres?" Setsuna asked of Chao as the two powerful senshi descended to the ground.

"She's Sailor Saturn's long-time companion. You never met her before?"

"Something about her is familiar..." Setsuna's voice trailed off as she racked her brain trying to remember where she had seen the redhead before, but the fuku's disguise function was scrambling her perceptions of the person inside with a low-level psychic field. She shook her head. "I don't know. She said Saotome, though, and the only Saotome I've known was this small kid."

"Probably Ceres."

"No, you don't understand. This kid was a boy."

"Like I said, probably Ceres."

"How can that be possible?"

"Sailor Ceres – Ranma Saotome – can, um, change genders."

"Does she have a switch or something?" Setsuna asked in disbelief.

"No, and be careful with water around her, he looks ugly in a fuku."

"Does he really..."

Chao gave a small smile. "She says so. I think the Mercurian-designed dimensional interface shell of our senshi forms would protect her from the transformative effects, but Sailor Saturn agrees with him. Agreed with him. I haven't seen her since I was a child, a young child. She spoke to me, once."

"And Sailor Ceres?" Setsuna asked as the two senshi got closer.

"She's stayed pretty quiet, but history tells she always gets involved in a fight once it starts."

"And there until it finishes," Ceres said as she touched down, Saturn a heartbeat behind her. Both looked flushed with success, but Setsuna could see the loss of their friends had touched them deeply. While Ceres looked as if she was smirking, deep in her eyes there was a shadow of rage that threatened to roll out of control. It seemed only Saturn's hand on hers kept her in check. Setsuna got the impression the control and restraint being shown would only last as long as it took herself and Chao to go through the gate, and then all bets would be off. "Is the gate ready yet?"

"You know what happens in the past?"

"We all do," Ceres replied. "Things happen differently with the repetitions. Not everything happens the same. I don't know why and you never told me why."

Saturn picked up the thread of conversation. "You existed out of time for most of the events that took place in the past, so we thought it might be you who was changing history in each repetition, hoping to get things right."

"The battle with Yoshihiro."

"Yoshihiro..." A distant smile tugged at Ceres's lips. "There's a name I haven't heard in a long time."

"You... knew him well?"

"I should. In some ways, I trained him. He was no threat, grandiose plans aside." Ceres smiled again. "But at the time, I didn't really know the senshi all that well, and I didn't see what Usagi was becoming."

"Didn't know them?" Setsuna asked, disbelief creeping into her voice. "You trained them."

Saturn's head snapped up. "No. We met Ranma in the dying days of Tokyo, when Yoshihiro stopped fighting, and right before Usagi executed him. We'd seen Sailor Ceres a little earlier, but... never had much to do with her. She'd turn up when the fighting was in central Tokyo, but she didn't show up in Kanagawa when we were attacked there. We got to know each other during the war, kind of. It was Ceres who rescued me when I was attacked and helped me go underground, and that was when we... got together."

Setsuna's head spun. "Wait. You didn't go to Kanagawa, and get a job working at a dorm?"

"Nope," Ceres replied. "I married my childhood sweetheart, but she was one of the first changed in the war, and then she was killed not long after. I went... a little mad and turned into a hermit. Wrong time ta be doin' it, but..." Even after a thousand years, the grief was still raw in her throat. Saturn's hand tightened on Ceres's, and the elder senshi drew power from the contact. "I wasn't there for them when they needed me. The Battle Royale was where it all went bad, though. Sailor Shiva awoke, and Usagi had already gone nuts. Just no one noticed it amongst the big stuff."

"But, you helped Usagi and the others," Setsuna said. "You trained the senshi. Under you, they became more effective fighters and... and..."

"Did they?" Ceres asked, worryingly. "Then the war will take a different turn, if you can't stop it."

"It sounds like the difference your time around was we'd already met Ranma," Hotaru added. "That could be a good thing," she said in a hopeful tone to Ceres. "You could have trained the senshi to be better at fighting, more disciplined. Like you trained me after we met."

Ceres shook her head bleakly. "Usagi would still be corrupted. Sailor Moon wanted one thing, and Usagi didn't understand why she had to wait. That was the cause of the war. It was why things got so bad before they came right. And that was why things happened like they did. She'd made this decision long ago, before me." She glanced up at the time gate, the wormhole having flickered now into life. "Go," she said to the other two senshi. "Go now. We don't know how long this'll stay open. We don't know how this will work, or if any more changes you make will make an impact on the now. But you need to try."

"Setsuna," Saturn said suddenly, "try _hard_."

Setsuna only offered a nod, before turning and taking Chao's hand and stepping through the gate, giving the Meltrandi only a brief moment to turn and wave before she was gone.

Nothing happened. Time didn't disintegrate. Space didn't vapourise. Saturn looked at Ceres, her bottom lip trembling. "Did we do it?"

"I hope so."

"Will it be enough?"

Ceres repeated herself, quietly. "I hope so."

Saturn looked up into the Martian sky, the pale blue being tinged now with pink around the edges as the sun started to dip lower in the sky. Her hand found Ceres's, and squeezed it. "It sounded different already. Like maybe you'd left Akane."

"Maybe."

"How do you think things went for us? You and me, I mean. In that other time. Do you think we met earlier? Do you think we fell in love faster?"

"I don' know." Ceres turned, let go of Saturn's hand and faced her, bringing her hands up and gripping the shorter senshi's shoulders while she peered intently into Saturn's eyes. The strength in her gaze caught the younger senshi like a deer in headlights. "But I do know this. This is it. Whatever else happened, whatever else happens, it's just us now. Us ta carry on the name and ideals of the senshi. Ta stand against the darkness and ta brighten the future for all people. In the name of the truth, and in the form of love, on behalf of the moon, we have ta stand tall against all we know ta be wrong and injust. Now, it's just you and me. The others are gone. The others are dead. We weren't quick enough ta act when things got bad. Right now... right now is all that matters to us." Ceres touched Saturn's cheek tenderly, caressing it with her fingertips. "The human race has lost its way, and it's up ta us ta bring it right again. Make things right. But not like Sailor Moon tried. She saw it right at the end what she'd done, an' that she'd doomed everyone who survived and came after to a slow death. A thousand years later, we're still paying the price. The fleets that fell today, that us senshi killed, will add fuel to that fire."

"But how can we save everyone if they won't let us? How can we save everything if we're hated?"

"Because the human race has forgotten how ta hate. They need ta start feelin' extremes again. Hate, love, pride, terror, they need ta feel again. Once they start, they won't stop. We need ta be the people they hate. We can be that. Don't you see? We can be whatever humanity needs ta survive."

"We can be... anything. Good, bad, helping, hindering."

"We'll live forever. We can be forever. One day, they'll need us again to help, and we can do that. But right now... we get to pause. Gather any survivors. Then we'll"

Ceres's confident words were lost in a burst of uncreation as time caught up. Earth itself, millions of kilometres away, was reduced to a smoking ruin in less than an instant... as it had lain for the last thousand years. Time had shifted, and the future was now worse than before.

* * *

"E-Eva," Misa sobbed, grabbing the smaller girl by the arms and bawling into her chest. The vampire looked distinctly unimpressed.

"This isn't like you."

"L-like me?"

"Like your people."

"You've seen... people with horns before?"

"I've seen lots of things with horns before," Evangeline replied dryly. "But yes, your type of horned person I have seen before, but not in a long time. When I was a young vampire, my kind waged war against your kind, and your kind lost. Our high daylight walkers, like me, were almost invincible to your attacks, like you saw before. What I can do, your warriors couldn't stop. And so they died."

"W-what am I?"

"One example of the next stage of human evolution, I would think," Eva replied. "And don't touch me."

"Sorry," Misa jerked back from Evangeline's arms, a shocked expression on her face. "Did I... did I really do that to Mana? And Sakurako?" Her face fell again and she burst into tears again.

"Grow a spine. Your other self has one. You should as well," Evangeline snapped, bringing Misa to her feet with her gaze. "The short answer is yes, you did. But Sakurako was already dead."

"She was alive!"

"I meant the damage done was too great. Even Konoka over there, brilliant basic healer than she is, couldn't do anything from Mana's injury. It was simply too great and she'd lost too much blood. She could heal the damage, but not the blood loss." Evangeline glanced back at the group in the clearing. "Mana needed killing, and I'd have preferred it was me who did it, but it wasn't, so you'll just have to learn to live with the fact you're now a killer."

"Aren't you going to reassure me –?"

The blond vampire laughed, a genuinely amused sound that tinkled around the pair. "Oh my, no. You're a Diclonius. A member of a race of killers. I'd wondered why you hadn't snapped and killed anyone yet, but that was probably because one of your horns looks like it's been fractured. Broken half off. No matter, with your vectors – your invisible limbs extending from your back – you're a natural-born killing machine, dedicated to spreading your race by infecting people with your genes and killing all humans." Evangeline laughed again, but this time it had a crueller, harsher tone. "You might have one chance."

"Yes?" Misa grabbed at Evangeline's hands desperately, ready to cling to any hope no matter how faint.

Behind them, in the clearing, Sailor Ceres slammed down into the ground, Zazie following behind in a more subdued manner.

"She said you were special. She wasn't meaning this. If she knew what you were, she'd kill you as well." Evangeline sighed, looking over the senshi with the cowed Zazie beside her. "She would if she had any sense in her head, that is," she added, quietly. "But she'll help you. Or direct you to people who can help you. Go. See what she can do for you." Misa nodded dumbly and trudged out into the clearing again.

From the air came another yell, Negi Springfield speeding towards the ground on his staff.

"Negi-sensei!" Asuna called out, waving her arms and walking away from Mana and Sakurako's bodies to draw him from the barely-covered carnage. "Over here!"

"Oh, how I wish I could just... bite him," Evangeline sighed, to herself while she stood in shadow. "He's his father's son. Rich in taste and texture. Shining brightly, with no shadows from years of deceit and the grind of life pressing down on him. So simple. One of these days..." She sighed again, before pulling her scattered thoughts back together and putting the Thousand Master from her mind and stalking out into the sunshine.

"Okay," Ceres said, her thumb rubbing at one of her cheeks as she thought. "The collars explode if you take them off. Anyone know what the delay is?"

"Point one five seconds," Chachamaru responded from the back of the team, where Evangeline joined her moments later.

"Wow, that's not very long," Ceres sighed.

"M-miss..." Misa said to Ceres, giving Negi a quick, panicked look as he stared at her. Ceres looked at her. "I'm... I'm..."

"We need to talk, you and me," Ceres said quickly. "But I dunno how long we got before someone sets the bombs off. So, we can do that right after we get off this island. But we gotta get off this island first. We're in a pocket dimension, and while I can get in and out, I'm not sure about getting others out."

"The brat and I can handle that," Evangeline folded her arms as she spoke up nodding at Negi. "I can handle it, but for this many people, I need a focus. The brat'll work for that."

"Right. Now we just need the collars off." Ceres looked around for inspiration, and found herself looking at Zazie. She paused in her rotation, keeping her gaze on her former adversary while an idea ran through her mind. Zazie gave her a questioning look, and pointed at her face. "Yes, you..."

The last small group of girls entered the clearing, ushered in by Kaede, who stopped when she saw the covered pile of Mana's remains, and Sakurako laid out beside her, her face peaceful. They joined the girls who stood around Ceres. "Okay. It works like this. We move _fast_. You slice the collars off, I gather them and throw them. We do this fast enough, we could almost stroll around everyone ta do it. But we gotta be careful doing this, right?" Zazie gave a nod, and pulled her blade out from under her suddenly-manifested cloak of darkness.

Asuna shivered. "I won't ever get used to this. What are we doing with the bodies?"

Kaede spoke up. "We take them with us."

Negi agreed. "No one gets left behind. Not even... Mana." He seemed to want to say more, but instead his eyes flicked over to where Mana's remains lay.

"Some of them look pretty bad," Kaede added. "If possible, I'd like to make that as the point of a second trip. The people at home might not like it, but we've all been through enough right now and some normality when we get out of here is what would be needed."

"I can't say how long this pocket dimension'll stay open, once we go, but I'll do what I can." Ceres readied herself before pointing at Evangeline. "You. When the bombs go off, we need everyone to be gone. We can't stay here, in case someone switches the world off. Understood?"

Evangeline bristled. "Who do you think you are to order me around?"

Ceres threw up a pair of fingers in a sideways 'V' in front of her face with her right hand, and planted her left hand on her hips, legs apart in a pose she'd seen Sailor Moon perform. "A warrior for peace and love! And in the name of... magical girls everywhere, I will... do this to get you all home!"

After the horror of the last ten minutes, needing some kind of release, the girls giggled over the difference between Ceres's stumbled delivery and her confident pose. "Okay, ready?" she asked to Zazie, while Evangeline readied her magic and began forming the magical circle to get them home. Without waiting, she swirled Negi into the circle as the exact opposite point to her and allowed the growing magical field to spread between the two of them.

Negi did his part unbidden, feeling the magic swirl around him, which he grabbed and directed almost unconsciously with his hands outstretched and thinking about home.

In the circle, looking around and sensing imminent victory, Yue slid her tetrapacked drink from her bag, and popped the strew into it, sucking long and hard on the pineapple and kiwifruit-flavoured drink.

Zazie armoured up again, and nodded at Ceres. Ceres nodded back, and the two flickered into motion.

To someone able to move and see at the speeds the two girls were working at, Zazie seemed to be almost casually slicing the collars in two, and then flicking them to Ceres, who would then throw the collars up high into the sky with all the strength at her command. To them, they seemed to be fireworks, exploding high in the sky minutes later, but to the rest of the girls it seemed more as if a single bomb went off high above their heads. Once the last bomb was cut and exploded high in the air, the magic circle flashed, and the group of teenagers disappeared, vanishing from the island in a swirl of light.

* * *

They reformed an instant later on the grounds of Mahora Academy in front of the gigantic World Tree, the magic circle continuing to spin for a couple of seconds before the internal runes disappeared, followed by the fade-out of the circles themselves as Negi and Evangeline let go of the forces running between them. Negi collapsed to the ground, panting heavily as Asuna knelt down beside him with a hand on his back for comfort. She felt as if she'd need someone to do the same for her shortly, with all they'd just been through on the island.

Evangeline's eyes first flicked to Chachamaru, to make sure the gynoid was safe, then automatically flicked to Negi.

"Master? Are you going to drain him while he's in a weakened state?"

"No, Chachamaru." Evangeline regarded her sometimes foe with a curious eye. "We might keep an eye on him. He will become something more than this, like his father. Nagi held no promise, either, until he exploded with magical skill and ability. First Kyoto, now this..."

"He didn't do anything, Master."

Evangeline smirked a little and hid behind her bangs when she dropped her head. "He grabbed that circle instinctively. His understanding of magic... the Thousand Master was a strong opponent, but only knew a relatively few spells. He was devastating through his mastery of those spells and that he never forgot about the physical like a lot of Western Mags do." She folded her arms, remembering something about Negi's father that nearly brought what little blood she had to the surface of her cheeks. "He will surpass his father in time. And _that_ magical energy... I have to be there when he reaches that point."

"Always thinking ahead," Chachamaru confirmed.

Nearby, Chisame gave Evangeline a weird look, having overhead at least some of the conversation. So had someone else.

"Hey!" Haruna yelled out suddenly. "Eva-chan's planning to take Negi as an adult!"

"Eeehh?" Chisame yelped from beside the manga artist. "She didn't –"

"Eeeeehhhh?" came a louder yell from the bulk of the assembled girls. Even having been through hell for the last week, even a slight return to normality was very welcome, even as the headmaster and a number of the senior teachers hurried through the World Tree plaza to where their missing students lay.

"Konoka!" the headmaster yelled in happiness when he saw her, gathering her up into his arms.

"Grandfather," Konoka replied, her arms wrapping around his body also. "It was so scary."

"You did well. You all did well," he said, raising his voice. Konoemon smiled, sadly.

Beside Chisame, Sayo, the ghost girl of the class heard something and turned around. "Oh, hello."

"What. The. Hell."

"Mana?"

The class turned to see a transparent figure standing next to Sayo, heir erstwhile attacker. "Ah, yes," Konoemon said, a hard glint in his eye. "Consider this punishment. Unable to leave the school grounds forevermore."

"A fate worse than death," Evangeline smirked.

"What about us, then?" On the other side of Sayo, more figures appeared – the others who had fallen throughout the Battle Royale. Fuka and Fumika Narutaki, Chizuru Naba, Sakurano Shiiba, Akira Otoshi, Natsumi Murakami, Satsuki Yotsuba, Ayaka Yukihiro and Makie Sasaki all seemed dazed and confused aside from Ayako, who was straight forward in her questioning.

"Fuka!"

"Fumika!" The twins reunited in a hug.

Konoemon smiled warmly now. "You? This isn't a punishment. It's another chance. The next step. While you live at Mahora, your chain of fate won't deplete, thanks to the power of the World Tree. You can stay here as long as you wish before moving on to your next cycle. Now, there are a few things you students need to know going forward..."

Asuna looked around. "Hey, where's the magical girl?"

"Eh?" the headmaster asked, mentally derailed.

"Yes," Negi said quietly. "I'd like to thank her as well."

But, aside from some students trickling to classes, and a red-haired girl wearing pink overalls and some oversized sunglasses sitting on steps nearby chewing on a pencil, there was no sign of the girl in the abbreviated grey sailor suit.

"Oh," Asuna replied, deflated, turning back to the headmaster as he continued.

Misa stood on the outside of the group, wrapping her arms around her shoulders tightly as if trying to hold in a great darkness, but her expression said she felt she was losing. The headmaster was talking now about magic, and how it wasn't really real and the girls shouldn't say anything about it, but Misa knew better. She'd seen magic, she felt the magic, she was the magic. Something was happening to her that she didn't fully understand. Something was pulsing under her fingers, making her feel like she was about to burst out of her skin into a new form like a butterfly bursting from a caterpillar 's chrysalis.

Or, perhaps judging by the way she felt, more a parasitic larvae bursting from the body of a caterpillar's corpse.

She felt someone looking at her, and turned to see the redhead staring from behind her sunglasses. It was... a powerful stare, as if there was something else to the girl that made her seem the size of the mighty World Tree behind her. Glancing again at the headmaster and other girls, who had their backs to Misa, she decided to see what the redhead found so interesting and walked over.

"Hello," the redhead said when Misa reached her. "We weren't formally introduced before. I'm still not gonna give you my name. Security an' all that. I'm not gonna say how we know each other, either. But I'm gonna tell you something."

"What's that?"

"You need to leave this place." The redhead spoke the words evenly, but Misa picked up on a deeper inflection on the word _need_. "It's quite important. There's things that are gonna happen to you. I saw what you did back on the island... it looks like you woke up the wrong way, and I know people who can help you."

Misa seized on this. "There are people who can help me?" she asked eagerly.

"Yeah. Bunch of girls. Nice girls, mostly, even if one of them is trying to destroy the world. She doesn't realise it yet, though. No, these girls are generally pretty nice. And they'll teach you all you need to know about your new powers." The redhead stood, discarding the pencil on the stairs. She gave it a dirty look. "I don't wanna think about where its owner had that pencil, but that was foul. You need to go to Kanagawa, though. The Ai Sou, it's a dorm for some university students. Tell them... tell them 'that evil bastard' sent you to learn what you need to learn."

Misa nodded, dumbly. "There are other people like me?"

"Oh yeah. And they've got a cat that'll give you a transformation wand."

Misa had visions of herself as a wasp larva bursting from the zombified corpse of a caterpillar again. "I'll transform?"

"Yeah," the redhead continued, unaware of the darker theme Misa's thoughts were taking, but her next words reassured the younger woman. "The skirt is a bit short, and the boots are weird if you're not used to them, but you can move freely in the outfit and stuff. Kinda embarrassing, but its generally worth it." She looked around for a few moments before turning back to Misa. "Remember: Kanagawa, Ai Sou." She hesitated. "Tell them... no, tell Hotaru... I'll fix the roof as well." The redhead nodded then, her message given, and she turned away.

"Wait!" Misa called out. "Do... do I thank you? Was that you on the island? Who saved us?"

The redhead paused, then turned and gave a crooked smile. "Why would I save anyone? I'm a bad guy." With that, she left the Plaza, leaving behind a very confused and scared young woman.

"Kanagawa..." Misa breathed. Others like her, with these arms... these vectors, as Evangeline had called them. Right now, they were inside her, unable to be felt by others, but she could feel them coiled within herself, itching to burst out and skewer someone. And, although she couldn't make out the words, there seemed to be a voice deep inside her head... telling her... something.

* * *

Hotaru watched the end of Battle Royale with two feelings playing out for dominance: the first, a feeling of relief that Ranma had managed to save the girls; and the second, that what had happened to Big Man and the production crew was horrible beyond belief. Sakura TV had gotten their show full of blood and gore, just not quite in the way they had originally planned.

The other senshi were quiet also, a sense of relief evident in their faces in most cases, but Hotaru noticed that Usagi's expression was... different. She was standing at the back of the lounge, almost in the corridor, and her face was in shadow so couldn't be properly seen. But, as far as Hotaru could tell, she seemed disappointed in something. But that they couldn't help? Or that someone else had finished it for them? Or something else, Hotaru didn't know anymore.

Usagi's expression was happy when she stepped out of the shadow, though. "Glad to see it's finally over!" she announced before heading into the kitchen.

Ami glanced over, looking horrified. "Someone butchered the production crew. Live, on camera. It looked like a doll."

"One of these Rozen Maiden things? I knew it!" Usagi crowed, throwing her hands up in the air before she moved out of sight.

"No," announced Shinku, from behind one of the chairs in the lounge. "This was not one of us."

"We're neatmmmrrrph," the ruin that was once Hina Ichigo said, her voice suddenly muffled.

"This is the work of some great evil. A sadistic killer."

"He'd be a great addimmmrrrph!" Hina said again, her voice cutting off halfway through her sentence.

Makoto popped her head over the back of her chair to look at the dolls, seeing Suiseiseki's hand putting something over Ichigo's mouth. "Is everything all right back here?"

"Oh, everything is all right, yes," Suiseiseki said with a sky smile. "We are just putting our little strawberry back together, yes." She held up the duct tape she was wrapping the younger doll in. "It is hard work, yes. Lots of wrapping."

"Oh," Makoto replied, looking a little confused. "Because it looks like you're shutting her –"

"This is certainly a great relief that the terrible show has been cancelled," Shinku continued over the top of Makoto's words. "The world will be a safer place now with less people on that island."

"It wasn't the people on the island that was the problem."

"It was a magical island, yes?" Suiseiseki asked. "It didn't exist on maps, yes?"

"It didn't, no," Hotaru answered quietly. "It was... a magical place. Created through Dark Kingdom magic." She paused. "No, that's the wrong way to look at it. Created through Dark Kingdom technology. The ability to create words to order... it sounds like Natsumi all over again."

"The General?" Minako asked. Hotaru nodded.

"Yes, the General. The one who was behind the creation of the System. She has the processing power to create entire worlds in a kind of cyberspace. But to be able to include people in it, abilities intact... well, to be able to create people in it alone would be a staggering effort."

"That's right," Ami said. "Not only the processing power required would be tremendous, but the storage space required would be astronomical. Storing an entire person's biodata and personality and memories would require more space than I can think of."

"If Ami can't think of it, it must be big," Usagi commented as she returned from the kitchen with a small snack in her hand. She headed back towards her room.

"At least it's all over now," Rei said, relief in her voice. "Everything can go back to normal."

"Giant robots and monsters, yes, normal," Makoto added.

"You know, you take the fun out of life sometimes." Rei threw a cushion at Makoto's face.

* * *

In Nerima, Ranma appeared in a small cul-de-sac in a burst of black lines of torn dimensional space. Once fully locked into the world, she looked around, then held up the kettle of water she'd taken with her from Mahora and upended it over her head. The hot water stung a little, but the change from her curse happened as usual and as the water hit the ground, the Ranma that was left was male. He sighed, and dropped the kettle, which hit the ground with a ringing tone.

But there was no one left in the street now to hear it.

A few moments later, a breeze stirred some of the fallen leaves in the street's gutter, spinning them around and around. Quickly, the breeze built up to be a strong gust in a spherical shape, before the stuff of time and space pulled apart with blue flashes of Cherenkov radiation flaring and white-hot bolts of electricity ripped out from the growing vortex and hit trees, fences and powerlines. The sphere became opaque, and then two people stepped from it – Setsuna and Chao.

Setsuna looked around. "The temporal flow seems about right. This is early 2001, by the common reckoning."

"You can tell all that by feeling around you?" Chao asked, slightly in awe.

Setsuna considered replying in the affirmative for a moment before deciding she could at least allow one insight into her abilities. "Actually, there's a digital clock over on that mall, with the temperature and date."

Chao looked where Setsuna pointed. "Oh."

"But..." Setsuna reached into her pocket, and pulled her transformation wand out. "It's here. That's... good. It means I have to exist in this time as a senshi."

"Well, that is good news. We can still stop the future."

"We can't stop the future," Setsuna corrected with a raised finger. "We can make sure it goes right."

"Of course."

"Come on. We've got to find the senshi. But first," Setsuna said, looking around, "we need to find out what's been going on recently. Without the Time Gate on Pluto, I'm limited in what I can see. A decent newspaper or magazine should be enough to find out what's happened. Come on." They began to walk towards the mall, towards the siren call of war.

SAILOR MOON SAYS:

Wow. That took a while. This chapter just kept going and going... and could have kept going. At least it's finished now! Sorry about the wait on this one. The chapters after this will return to the regular size. We're at or just after the midway point now in this last series. Hopefully you'll find the rest of the series as entertaining.


	17. Chapter 17

**DISCLAIMER:** Relatively standard stuff. Existing characters are properties of the people who made them up. Mitsuki, and several other characters are mine, and so's the story, hence ownership and copyright of them belongs to me. Contact me at my usual email address if you want permission to use anything I've written for whatever purposes.

**Justice**

By

Raymond Cooper

One Step Ahead

The bottom of the stairs leading to the Ai Sou boarding house were easy to miss if one did not know what to look for, and unfortunately for Setsuna Meioh and Chao Klan, Setsuna had never visited the dorm before – at least, not from this direction. Previously, she'd been able to gate there directly but with Chao, and with what she had learnt from the future, Setsuna wanted time to think and digest what she had learned. For her part, the miclonised Meltrandi's head turned on a swivel, taking everything in as if it were new.

Setsuna guessed for her it probably was. The future was a different place, lots of tall silvery buildings, aircars, orbital elevators and giant spacecraft landing and leaving from places all around the globe. Here? Not so much as a flying car. Except in special places, no humanoid robots powered by sentient AIs, either. Nor were there any aliens 60 metres tall walking that way and this.

When they did find the stairs, Setsuna found they went on far longer than she thought. She had once thought she was in good shape; now she realised she had been taking the other side of herself far too much for granted. Being a senshi was great for so many things – heavy lifting, cleaning at speed and leaping up flights of stairs as if there was no height difference. Depowered? That was a completely different story.

She shifted the strap of her backpack on her shoulder as she looked up again. Chao's hands ran along the wooden railing lightly, swearing very quietly as she got a splinter. She held her finger up with a bright red dot where the piece of wood from the railing had entered her finger. "If I was full sized, we'd be at the top by now. And this wouldn't have penetrated my finger."

"If you were full size," Setsuna reminded the younger woman, "we would have had the senshi descend on us as an enemy, quickly followed by half the world's military forces." Her face looked pained for an instant. "While weirdness may be a way of life for Japan, especially in Tokyo, the rest of the world has none of this happen. No aliens, no time travellers, no magical girls or mystical knights. It's just here."

"Why is that?"

Setsuna stopped and turned, pointing without having to see. "Out there is the last remnant of the Moon Kingdom besides the senshi. A sliver of what was one great. An egg, waiting for the rebirth of that time."

"An egg? Like what was under Crystal Tokyo of my time?"

Setsuna nodded slowly. "I suspect so, at least. The White Egg. If Queen Serenity's attempt to save her daughter and her daughter's protectors and friends failed, there would always be the White Egg to bring humanity to that point again. Waiting for the time to hatch and give birth to a new world."

"Wow." Chao's eyes looked out into the distance, seeing heat haze, tree leaves, and scattered snatches of buildings through the leaves. So many people. "I can see why they'd hate us."

Taken aback, Setsuna gave Chao a confused look. "Why do you mean?"

"Ripping their world out from under them to build a new one? No say in the matter? It just happens? It was what led to the war in my world." Chao turned back to the stairs and continued climbing.

Setsuna took another look behind her. "I had never really thought of it that way. But what I saw in your time... it wasn't meant to be that way. It was meant to be a time of great peace and advancement. Love and compassion and understanding. Do these stairs _never end?"_

"Another two flights. But love can't be forced. Compassion has to be tempered. Peace can't be forced and advancement requires acceptance."

"Well, obviously something went wrong. It is supposed to have been chosen. A century from now, things on Earth are much worse. Much worse than they are now. Ecological collapse, alien invaders, magical incursions, terrorism and state sponsored piracy on a global scale. Sailor Moon provided an option. It didn't have to be accepted, but it was. That was what made the new Moon Kingdom I recall. That I served and visited." Setsuna looked pale as she remembered what she had seen in the future just days in the past now. "I cannot believe that Usagi did that. That she could cause such pain and misery and hatred. It's not in her character."

"Obviously it is," Chao said, before falling silent again. Setsuna wanted to rebut the argument, but could find no way to.

At the top of the stairs, they found the senshi assembled, untransformed, stepping through a series of simplistic martial arts katas. Low punch, high punch, turn and kick repeatedly through the four cardinal points. Setsuna stopped, and touched Chao's shoulder lightly so she would also stop.

"These... these are them," Chao said, dumbly. Setsuna saw the shock and surprise on her face. While she'd known she was going to meet the senshi, while she thought she was ready for it, in actual fact she wasn't ready, not in the slightest, and she found she was nervous. "This is ridiculous. I'm taller than all of them put together – or I can be – and I am so nervous I feel I may need to change my underwear."

"Chao –"

"If I was wearing any."

"Chao. Too much information." Setsuna stifled a grin and tried to look serious. "They are just normal girls. If you talk to them, they're normal. They have interests. They like boys. They like food and dieting. They hate school. Or college now, I suppose. They have likes and dislikes. They're people."

"They're historical figures," Chao whispered. "Important historical figures. I keep thinking, if I say anything to them I'm going to change history and that's bad. But then I have to remind myself – that's what we're here to do. Change history."

Nodding, Setsuna agreed. "It's against my nature, believe me. But we're not so much changing it as putting right what has gone wrong."

"Regardless of whether I'm a senshi or not, regardless whether I think they were justified or not, they were also responsible for the deaths of millions."

"In your time, they were responsible. In this time, they haven't done anything yet. We have to ensure they don't." The taller woman looked at Usagi, stumbling through a change in actions. "She cannot make the mistake she made last time."

Chao leaned in closer and whispered quieter. "Is she really necessary to the timeline? I mean, I could –"

"She's very important."

"But I could –"

"She's _very_ important. Let me stress the word _very_ again."

Across from the women, Ami looked up, and pulled back slightly in surprise. She said something to the others, who also turned one by one to look at the new arrivals. Usagi practically leaped at them in welcome, her arms wrapping tightly around Setsuna.

"It's so good to see you! It's really great! Setsuna, we haven't seen you in so long." She began dragging Setsuna towards the dorm's front doors. "We have to entertain our guests!"

Setsuna gave her an imperiously annoyed glance. Usagi pouted and her eyes filled with tears.

"Please don't make me go back to practise this morning," she begged. "Give me an excuse." A gnarled cane wielded by an intensely old woman banged on the back of Usagi's head.

"Back to work, pink one!" Usagi rubbed her head, looking angry as she trudged back to her position on the field.

"But you're not hitting any of them! Look! They're going inside!"

"They do not need the practice, pink one."

Setsuna saw no more as her and Chao were ushered into the front lounge of the dorm's main building, the other senshi gathered around them and directing them on their way.

"I'll get breakfast out!" Makoto said, peeling off for the kitchen.

"I'll help!" Rei suggested, leaving Ami, Minako and Hotaru to guide the other two senshi to couches to sit down.

"It has been a while," Ami started once the five had sat.

"We were beginning to think you didn't love us anymore," Minako added cheekily. Chao's gaze shifted from one to the other with a mix of shock, horror and embarrassment. Minako noticed. "But you're giving me the heebie jeebies yourself. I know I still smell from morning training, but surely it's not that bad. Is it that bad, Hotaru?"

Hotaru shook her head from where she sat next to Minako, leaning away at the waist. Her eyes were locked on Chao. "You're a senshi," she said.

Chao looked dumbfounded. "H-how did you guess?"

"Neither of my other parents have called me in some time. I would assume they'd been prevented from seeing me. If Setsuna is here, now, with someone – that someone is someone important to us. I have reason to believe things are going to get very, very bad soon." Setsuna was impressed at her jointly-adopted daughter's grasp of the situation. "And if she's here now with you, and you're important, you're a way out of this problem. Somehow. Setsuna also being a time traveller suggests you may be someone from the future. Who else would be important enough to bring back from the future? You're a senshi."

"I could be from the past," Chao offered.

Hotaru shook her head definitely. "Not a chance."

"Why is that?" Setsuna asked.

"Because you hate the past."

"I do not!"

Hotaru's face cracked in a small smile as she peered at one of her adoptive mothers. "Then why do you keep talking to Haruna and Michiru about how you hate the 70s?"

"That's because of the fashion –" Setsuna started before realising Minako and Ami had small smiles creeping across their faces. "Oh. You've grown a sense of humour."

"Yes," Hotaru nodded.

"This was unexpected." And disturbing. Hotaru had always been understated, her humour gentle and easily missed if one did not know her, but she was never open. Never cracking jokes, never slipping something into conversation that was an obvious joke, or even a bad one. It made Setsuna wonder what else was changing here that she wasn't seeing.

Rei and Makoto returned with a simple breakfast and the girls sat down to eat. Chao and Setsuna joined them, both wary but for different reasons. Chao had difficulty looking up at anyone in the eye.

"So, where were you?" Makoto asked. "We didn't see you for... well... for a very long time."

"I missed you," Hotaru interjected as she eyed an egg Minako was sizing up.

"I was... indisposed." Setsuna was reluctant to say more until she knew what was going on. "I was watching, though. And I have heard some of what has transpired in recent days. This... Battle Royale show sounded most disturbing."

"Oh, it was,' Minako agreed. "And yet, no one could stop watching it."

"You certainly didn't," Rei replied drily as Hotaru won the race to the egg, leaving Minako's chopsticks snapping on empty air. She glared at the younger senshi, who dipped food into the egg's yolk before eating it, a serene and slightly superior expression on her face.

"Oh shut up. You were there, too," Minako reminded Rei.

"How did it happen?"

"Not entirely sure," Makoto replied.

Ami took up the discussion. "Sakura TV produced the show, but we think they had Dark Kingdom backing. It is rather disturbing, but the enemy we face these days doesn't seem to be focussed on magical and biological means of draining energy. They seem to have a technological backing."

"The battleship," Setsuna remembered aloud. Ami raised an eyebrow in question. "A Dark Kingdom warship, from the last war, turned up on Pluto a short time ago. It destroyed the Gate of Time."

Silence descended on the table as the younger girls looked at one another and took the news in.

"Isn't that impossible?" Hotaru asked, finally. She seemed to be searching for something with her eyes that Setsuna couldn't see. "Oh, I see. It disrupted the graviton structures holding that chronoton envelope open against spacetime and encouraged an accelerated entropic collapse."

"Yes," Setsuna replied simply, giving Hotaru a quick stare. There definitely was something different about her.

"Although speaking technically, that shouldn't have happened. The graviton structures would destabilise, collapsing the probability waveform your facility relied on, but the underlying quantum structures would reset that after a certain amount of time. Although... oh. That might be a few months away..."

Chao spoke up now. "The Gate of Time never reopened."

"No, she's right," Setsuna confirmed. "Although much of the specific technology and terminology is beyond me, I was assured by... Mercurian architects that the basic structure was unassailable and effectively indestructible. But I did see local spacetime collapse and fracture."

Amy considered the possibilities. "It is possible," she conceded at length, "that they simply didn't tell you it would require a reset."

"Like a deflated balloon being re-blown up?" Rei asked.

"Exactly." Amy shrugged, the mental problem over for her. "The Gate should be accessible again in a few months."

Setsuna exchanged a quick glance with Chao, who was still impressed to be in the presence of the senshi, the actual senshi of the Inner System. The core worlds of the former Moon Kingdom. Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter, with Saturn also beside them duelling with Venus with chopsticks. This much power...

"We needed to ask if you had seen – seen any new senshi recently?" Setsuna asked.

"New senshi?" Makoto asked curiously. "Aside from Sailor Ceres, no."

Minako made a motion with her arm that looked like a long neck with a head on it, opening a gap between her fingers and thumb as if it was a mouth. She spoke with a squeaky voice while looking at Hotaru. "I'm chibi Sailor Saturn!" She snagged the last egg, but also took a chopstick to the forehead, pole-axing her a moment later.

"No one else," Hotaru said. "At least, not as far as we know. That whole Battle Royale thing... it was kind of difficult. And we've been training."

"Training to do what, exactly?" Setsuna asked.

Chao breathed out slowly in awe. "Training to be superheroes..."

"Of a sort," Makoto replied, giving the other woman a quick nod that made her hair bounce. "We're having problems at the moment."

"The magical of Japan have lost the support of the people," Rei added.

"The Dark Kingdom has launched an insidious plot to discredit us by raising average, everyday people up as heroes. We need to be able to fight on the same level."

"So we're training in martial arts and going to become coloured guardians of the world. With a giant robot and everything," Hotaru added as an afterthought.

"That sounds... overly complicated and dramatic," Setsuna commented. "Are you sure that's wise? Or necessary? Surely if you beat the Dark Kingdom now –"

"Yoshihiro isn't like the others we've faced. And there's something wrong," Hotaru said, her voice trailing off. She glanced at the others. "You all know it, too," she added. The others looked uncomfortable, looking away from the younger senshi and finding other things to do. "We have to face this sometime. It's -"

"Setsuna! It's really really good to see you!" Usagi called from behind. Hotaru fell silent, her eyes darting to their leader as she entered. "It's been so long. What have you been doing? Do you know what's going on? I should probably have a bath..."

"I've been away," Setsuna broke into the almost stream of consciousness from Usagi. "The others have been... bringing me up to date on your recent events. Tell me, are you aware of any other senshi at present?"

Usagi shrugged. "Sailor Ceres, but seeing as she's... he's... she's... Ranma's working for the bad guys now I don't really think shhhh... Ranma's counted as one of us anymore."

"There may be one other," Hotaru said slowly, not wanting to admit it out loud. "Ranma suggested one of the girls on the island was a senshi. I don't know if she was, but he was pretty certain of it."

"Ranma's evil," sniffed Usagi, before sweeping out of the dining area and off to her room to gather toiletries and a change of clothes for a bath. Chao's eyes followed her as she left.

"Is he?" Setsuna asked. "I haven't been around much lately. I haven't seen... much here."

"He's not evil," Hotaru said quickly.

"He's working for the bad guys, though, that much we can't dispute," Makoto said kindly. "That kind of makes him evil."

"He's not –" Chao started, then stopped, suddenly taking an intense interest in her thumb to stop talking. Hotaru shot her a look.

"There's more going on. You all know it. You all feel it." Hotaru moved her legs as a doll in a pink cloak ran past, giggling maniacally while waving a kitchen knife. Hotaru plucked the knife from the dolls hands as it passed, and the doll slumped, disappointed. "No running with knives."

"Where did Usagi go?" the doll asked, wide-eyed, remnants of duct tape still stuck around her mouth.

"Baths," Rei replied, and the doll cackled again and ran off down the hallway. Two of her older sisters joined her, sighing and shaking their heads.

"She is an idiot, yes?"

"Very over-enthusiastic."

"Dolls..." Setsuna said, momentarily distracted.

"Hmm? Oh, Usagi's taken up doll collecting," Minako answered. "They love her, for some reason."

Setsuna looked unconvinced. Chao felt very uncomfortable. There was something she was sure she had been told in childhood...

Cologne hopped into the room momentarily. "I will be back in the afternoon for training again. You are all improving. You may yet be ready to do this." She glanced at Setsuna, suspicious of the new arrivals.

"Thank you," Hotaru replied to the elder Chinese.

"You won't beat former son-in-law, but I do not think it's him you would be fighting. You'll be ready enough. Although that other one..." Cologne shook her head. "You will be ready," she told the others. "I will train more extensively with the other one later today." She nodded at the girls, and left the dorm for home.

"She seems... unusual," Setsuna allowed, her eyes having followed Cologne out the door.

"She's training us to be mortal martial arts heroes," Minako answered.

"Oh," was all Setsuna could think to respond with.

* * *

Ranma held a beam in place while his monsters swarmed over plating, nailing and bolting it down into place. This felt good, being back here in Yoshihiro's pocket dimension. It felt... not exactly clean, but not bad, either. Certainly didn't feel as bad and as evil as the isolated island where Umiko had a class of children try to kill one another.

Although, this being said, a tickle between his shoulder blades that felt much as he imagined a knife sticking from them would feel suggested Umiko was standing right behind him at that point. He turned; she was, looking more feline than she usually did. Ranma suppressed a shudder and turned away. "Can I help you?" he asked.

"You can tell me that," Umiko replied. "You disappeared for two weeks. Two whole weeks. And while you were gone, the Battle Royale show fell apart."

"You know, I caught part of that in China," Ranma said, distracted as he picked up another beam to hold in place. "It wasn't something that the Chinese I stayed with were happy to see. They thought it was a sign of Japan's growing decadence, a changing attitude to how it viewed its people... and by extension the rest of the world. There are cries out there for censure of Japan, sanctions, things that would cripple our country like it hasn't been in fifty years. And I watched it, and I just couldn't figure out why you did it. What harm did these girls do to you?"

"It's none of your business."

Ranma turned around again and faced the other General. "I'm supposed to be working to bring life energies into here for the Master. I'm doing that. You tried something that was morally disgusting, absolutely abhorrent." He could see that Umiko had no reaction to that. He changed the meaning of his statement slightly. "How are you supposed to get energy from dead people?"

Umiko flicked her short hair back carelessly with a hand. "I don't expect you to understand what I did or why I did it. After all, you're working against us here. I _know _it, Ranma. I know it deep in my bones. I have the Master's best interests at heart. _I_ know what is in his heart, what _his_ best interests are, what _he_ should be doing to win this war."

"But, this isn't a war!" Ranma protested.

"How little you know," Umiko sneered.

"No, you listen." Ranma held up a finger in front of him, getting angry now despite himself. "One, the Dark Moon Kingdom is still sealed. It was sealed a long time ago, prob'ly before humans could talk or something. Two, no one has been able to unlock it before and bring it back into alignment with the real world. With this one. Although the senshi told me once that their Moon Kingdom sat apart from this world as well, so maybe they're in different dimensions or something." He held a third finger up. "Three, the Master is trying to unseal the other dimension. It survived, but is locked in darkness. He wants to bring it into the light where there are plenty of resources, right?"

"How little you know," Umiko repeated herself. "The Master does _not_ want that!"

"Then what **does** he want?" Ranma pressed.

Umiko paused, and Ranma realised she didn't know, either. So, what he'd seen with Kaname when he was dead had been accurate: Yoshihiro was besieged by indecision. Now, the question of _why_ he was crippled by this was going to be an interesting story. "He wants the complete eradication of the senshi and all they stand for, and for the Dark Moon Kingdom to stand in dominion of everything on this world and all others."

"If he wanted that, he wouldn't have us doing this, bickering and picking up scraps of energy to store for some unknown future use," Ranma shot back. "I've half a mind to go demand what's going on. I can work better, more efficiently if I know what I'm working towards."

"For now, you're his favourite new play toy," Umiko replied, folding her arms defensively and leaning back slightly from Ranma. "His new rattle. He'll shake you and shake you while you amuse him, and then he'll cast you aside and come back to me." She smirked again before turning away, determined to have the last word. "He always comes back to me."

"What are you, his nurse or something?" Ranma shook his head, and turned back to his team. Ayumu was there, her expression hard and calculating while she stared at Umiko's back. She noticed after a second that Ranma was watching, and like someone had flicked a switch her face dropped back into the semi-happy semi-detached expression she was known for. "Maybe I should go see the Master anyway. Ask him outright."

"If you think that's best," Ayumu replied.

"Do you know what he'd say?"

"Why would I know? I know nothing."

"Ayumu... sometimes... sometimes I wonder exactly why you're working with me." Ranma gave her a suspicious glare for a moment. "I'm sure you've got your own agenda here as well. Everyone seems to."

"Sasaki doesn't," Ayumu giggled. "She just likes cats, so she's trailing Umiko in her spare time." Ayumu's expression sharpened again for just a moment. "And what is your hidden agenda?"

"As much as I say otherwise, this is a war, and I don't think either side knows why they're fighting anymore," Ranma admitted, more to himself than anything. "Sailor Moon, she's fighting for a future where everyone's happy. But that everyone excludes everyone here, or in the Dark Moon Kingdom. As I understand it, they wanted access to the same happiness that existed in the past. The flipside to the White Moon Kingdom, or something. They had nothing, the senshi's parents... past selves... whatever... had everything and wouldn't share. I think there has to be a middle ground, some place both can exist."

"Do you know what the future looks like?" Ayumu asked curiously. A couple of the other monsters stopped work to listen as Ranma grew distant.

"I saw some futures. Some were scary. Some were as Sailor Moon wanted them to come to pass, and they were frightening. Others were good. She's the key. She's always been the key, the one who can change the future and make it a brighter place, but I think she's so caught up in this war and fighting that she's going to take any chance she can to stop it from ending in anything other than a loss for us here." He shook his head. "I really don't know. I'd love ta say that Sailor Moon won't need help making the right decision, but I think she does. I think she's looking at things in black and white, and... well, look at you all. These aren't black uniforms. They're grey, really. A dark grey, but grey all the same. It's the Dark Moon Kingdom, not the Black Moon Kingdom. There's good and there's evil and there's the average everyday people who come somewhere in between. I think that has to be the same there as it is here."

"And how do you think that applies to the Master?"

Ranma picked his words carefully and spoke slowly. "I think the Master is lost in indecision. I think he has a choice to make, but he's not fully sure what the choice _is_. It's like, he could end this, I'm sure, by going to Sailor Moon and asking her to free his people and give them the same chance at life that anyone else has. To not be locked up in a dark dimension lacking everything needed for life, to not be frozen in time or whatever was done to them. And if she was a bit more grown up, she might realise that talking with the enemy and making them a friend would end the war. Bring them to her way of thinking. Stop the violence by giving them what they need to live instead of continuing to trap them in a pocket universe or something." He shrugged. "I could be completely wrong, though. And Sailor Moon... there's something there, I don't know what, but it seems dark. Like Umiko. I saw it for an instant when I touched everything, but I can't remember it anymore and I hate that I can't remember it."

"That sounds fair," Ayumu said after a few moments before switching back into her normal spaced-out self and drifting off out of sight.

Ranma shook his head. No, something was really not right in this world or the other.

* * *

Umiko found herself stalking through corridors after leaving Ranma and his group. This could not go on. He was a threat to her authority, the power with which she spoke on behalf of Yoshihiro. The Master was quiet, preferring to delegate rather than take direct action, and Umiko noticed that since he had hatched from his earlier larval form into the blond-haired man he currently was that he was taking less and less action as time went by. He considered the angles more and more, and it fell to Umiko more and more often to step in and make the hard decisions.

The only decisions, if she had her way. The Master was faltering. She didn't know why, but as his number one officer, she was the person who would step into the breach.

Ranma threatened that assurance of power, that transition to her. She wasn't sure how or why but the Master seemed to prefer him somehow. He had some power over Yoshihiro, and this could no longer be acceptable.

If the Master wouldn't put an end to Ranma and his prattling schemes, then it would fall to Umiko to take him out.

To do that, though, she would need to dismantle his support structures. Take out his most loyal subjects. And the first was on the bridge of their battleship – Natsumi Otohime. The monster Baku was Yoshihiro's through and through, created for reasons the Master had yet to tell Umiko. Like everything he did, it was cloaked in mystery and layers of misdirection – and yet, if Baku had only been needed for the System construct, where Yoshihiro had trapped millions of people assumed destroyed in Tokyo, then why was he keeping her alive now? Why, when she was the biggest supporter of the biggest agent of chaos in Yoshihiro's armies?

It was a position Umiko could not allow to continue any further. If the Master wouldn't take action, she would.

She finally realised where she had walked to – the command centre. Baku sat in the centre of the room, wired into the ship's systems, tubing running under her flesh and winding its way across the floor into hidden recesses under consoles. Her face couldn't be seen, covered by the virtual reality headset she wore on her head. Umiko reached out to flick the headset up, then hesitated. This would be her first real action that would go against the Master's wishes. He wanted Natsumi left alone, he was willing to leave her hooked into the ship's systems and give her access to whatever she wanted to do – whatever the reason she was still hooked into them for. She was catatonic, supposedly. Unable to respond to the real world. Her hand wavered for a moment, then firmly flipped up the VR headset's faceplate, and slapped the sightless girl on her cheek with a sudden fury she hadn't realised had been building in her walk through the base.

For good measure, she slapped Natsumi again. She leaned in close to the girl's ear. "This is only going to get worse for you now. And I'm going to enjoy myself." A single claw popped from one of Umiko's fingers, and she drew it down Natsumi's cheek, drawing blood.

TO BE CONTINUED...

SAILOR MOON SAYS:

This took a lot longer to write than I thought. Since the last chapter came out, I've had and ended a relationship, wrote a few chapters of some other fics and some original works, um... not really a whole lot. This series isn't finished, although I am sadly writing a lot slower than I used to – my laptop's battery mostly died and I can't write on the train while commuting anymore, where I was at my most productive.

For some notes, I was glancing back at earlier chapters while writing the end of this tonight, and found something. I'd noted in Love chapter 14 that we had two new poodles, and that one had been hit by a 4WD and luckily survived. I pointed out at the time that we were lucky it was that one hit, as he was light and that meant when he was hit he was thrown rather than actually run over. Unfortunately, last year his brother was hit by a speeding 4WD on the road outside our gate and was killed. We've since taken on a rescued poodle as company for the remaining brother, who is faintly put out by all the loving attention she gives him.

Next chapter: Marvel Civil War kicks off when... wait, wrong series. Dark Kingdom Civil War kicks off. Who will win? Who will survive? Who is the most loyalist monster of them all? Drama.


	18. Chapter 18

**DISCLAIMER:** Relatively standard stuff. Existing characters are properties of the people who made them up or currently own them. Mitsuki, and several other characters are mine, and so's the story, hence ownership and copyright of them belongs to me.

**Justice**

By

Raymond Cooper

Beginning of the End

"Excuse me," a quiet, hesitant voice asked from the front door to the dorm. "Is this the Ai Sou?"

Setsuna and the other senshi turned to see a girl standing in the doorway to the dorm's front hall. She seemed as small and uncertain as her voice sounded, and as Makoto moved forward to speak with her, Chao grabbed her arm and gave her a warning shake of her head. Setsuna stepped closer, careful not to get too close. She had only seen Misa Kakizaki fleetingly in the future, but she had seen the meltdown the minor senshi had experienced and the flaying and dissection of Valkyries.

Behind them, drawn towards Misa as if she was a magnet, Luna and Artemis entered the room, and glanced at one another.

"This is the Ai Sou," Setsuna replied, while Makoto frowned at Chao and pulled her arm away.

"What are you doing?" she asked quietly, before turning back to the new arrival. "This is the Ai Sou," she repeated. "Although this is a private dorm and at this time we're not taking any new applicants."

"Oh," Misa said, her eyes drifting down and away. She started to turn before Setsuna spoke again.

"But you're welcome to stay. I'm sure there's another room somewhere here."

Hotaru's eyes turned to Setsuna now with laser-like intensity in her eyes. Luna swatted her leg, and she glanced down at the knowing, even gaze from the cat, then she looked up again at Makoto and coughed emphatically. Makoto looked over and saw the assembled cats and their laser-like gaze and finally nodded. "Yes. Yes, we do have another room. I'm so sorry for the confusion."

"I was told to come here," Misa said anxiously. "I was told the people here could help me."

"Could this be the day, Luna?" Artemis asked quietly from behind the group.

Luna looked pensive. "Honestly, I thought Ranma would be the first of the minor senshi to be active. If I'd known the trouble he'd cause, I never would have provided him with a transformation wand."

"You couldn't have known," Artemis replied. "But Usagi is talking about creating Crystal Tokyo now instead of in a thousand years. Shouldn't that have some effect on how things progress?"

"But she can't possibly succeed. The future says she can't," Luna answered as the girls brought Misa into the dorm's lounge. The girl still seemed to be frightened and flinched away when anyone tried to touch her. Rei frowned.

"Haven't I seen you somewhere before?" she asked, and Misa dropped her head down low, sniffing quietly.

"But assuming she does," Artemis continued, frowning. "Wouldn't that mean that the others, all the minor senshi, wouldn't they all start to awaken as well?"

Luna considered this for a while, but had no immediate answer. She flicked her tail in annoyance and frustration. "Really now. Perhaps they already are. Perhaps we'll find more of them. The general troops and population of the Moon Kingdom. Perhaps..."

Artemis said nothing for the moment, flicking his eyes from Luna to Misa.

"I – I was told to come here," Misa repeated, trying not to cry. "Was told people could help me. Save me from me."

"What do you mean?" Makoto asked.

Chao stepped back, the miclonised Zentraedi putting a further distance between the two. "We were too late to stop the end of the Battle Royale show. I'm sorry."

Misa continued to stare at the floor. Makoto blinked in realisation. "Oh! You're one of the contestants from Battle Royale?"

"Ranma told you to come here," Hotaru breathed.

"If you mean a red-headed girl in a grey skirt, then yes," Misa replied, nodding her head. "I think so. She looked different at Mahora."

"Why did Ranma tell you to come here?" Minako asked, folding her arms and taking on a suspicious glare. This reeked of a trap, and if Ranma had something to do with this girl coming here then there was something very wrong that was about to happen. The fact Setsuna and this new time traveller companion of hers were both keeping their distance was also a factor in her thinking. Subconsciously, Minako put herself as a barrier between the senshi and a possible threat.

"She, she said you could help me."

Minako snorted. "Save you from yourself, you said. What do you mean? Why did he tell you to come here?"

"I don't – I talked to a girl, I –"

Curious doll eyes appeared from around the side of the sofa.

"I think you've been sent here to kill us."

"No, I –"

"I think you're a monster in disguise. Something sent here to explode and kill us all."

"Sailor Venus," Chao began, but Minako continued on regardless, pressing the attack and moving in closer. She couldn't see how this girl could be a threat.

"Eva said I'm a –"

"Who is this Eva? Ranma sent you here, so who else knows we're here? Who -"

Minako's voice cut off as part of her fringe and hair across the top of her head separated from her scalp without warning and dropped to the ground. At the same time, the ceiling violently shuddered directly opposite Minako as something sliced into it. She froze, having felt something pass overhead but unsure what had just happened. Misa looked as if she was about to pass out.

Now Chao stepped forward again, slowly, putting her hands up in a non-threatening manner to Misa, staring at her eyes to take her attention. "Calm down, Misa. Just calm down. You said Evangeline told you that you were a Diclonius, right?"

"You know Eva?" Plaster fell as whatever had smacked into the ceiling was retracted. No one noticed, the room almost completely still and silent.

Chao nodded, moving closer. Setsuna took her queues from the Meltrandi senshi, stepping towards her other side. "Yes, Eva is known to my family. One of my ancestors from nine hundred years ago. My time, obviously. But Eva is still around in my time."

"In your time?"

"Yes. I come from a day a thousand years from now and I've come back to help you."

Misa glanced at the floor, the shock and fear in her eyes hidden for a moment. In that instant, Chao shot Setsuna a panicked glance – _what am I going to do?_ – but Setsuna had no ideas. She shrugged in return, looking back to Misa as she lifted her eyes again.

"What do I do?"

"First of all," Chao reached out slowly to take Misa's shoulder, hoping against hope that her invisible vectors had retracted and weren't waving around uncontrollably, "we're going to go outside and sit down for a while. Setsuna is going to stay in here and explain the situation, and then we're going to go... relax." As she ushered Misa out, she shot Setsuna another panicked glance.

Once the two were gone from the room, the younger senshi present exploded with questions and noise. Minako, still standing immobile with half her scalp showing through her reverse Mohawk, finally unclenched her fists. "What. The. Hell. Was. That."

"There is much I do not know myself yet," Setsuna said, "but I think there is a story you must hear."

* * *

Natsumi Otohime, if she was still alive and conscious, was locked somewhere inside her head. Held against her will, brought back into the Master's fold, she was as much a prisoner as she was anything else. And now, Umiko stood with her back to her, clawed fingertips stained a deep, glistening red. Blood spatter around the command deck of the salvaged Dark Kingdom battleship told a story of violence and frenzy, lines of droplets and splashes of vivid colour covering monitors and consoles and wall plating and deck grills. Natsumi herself was cut, her cheeks sliced, chest and stomach torn, shoulders and arms also showing deep injuries.

Being a General, even a comatose one, she would heal from these. They would not kill her, but they did hurt, and made her less effective. Removing even more of her effectiveness, Natsumi's VR headset lay discarded to one side, smashed open and delicate electronics torn free. Without it and the controls within, the monster Baku could not operate the ship's systems.

She was cut off and alone.

Umiko considered. What else could she do? Natsumi Otohime had been part of the Master's plan to extract the life force from the seven million people they trapped in a simulated Tokyo. Once that ploy had failed and the people of Tokyo and the centre of the city was returned to the real world, Baku had no longer been needed, but had been left tied up to the ship's systems. When Umiko had the idea to create Battle Royale, she had used Baku's powers to construct the island Big Man used for the series. That hadn't been hard. But Umiko was sure Natsumi had moved against her during the filming of the show, and she was sure Natsumi had protected Ranma from being detected on the island as well. They were both in on this, they had to be. Ranma had some kind of proprietary interest in Natsumi, some kind of history with the young girl, but she couldn't understand it. There was no basis, unless something had happened in the time she had spent with Ranma and the senshi the year before.

No. The more Umiko thought of it, the more she realised Ranma's existence as a General was behind every failure they had experienced. Even now he was working against them. True, his plan to use the fictitious International Rescue organisation was netting them energy that wasn't immediately being rescued and siphoned off by the senshi, but he could be taking so much more.

Umiko knew he could fight Sailor Saturn to a standstill, and that was before he had elevated himself to the level of a General, so why didn't he simply defeat the senshi? Why didn't he take the fight to their hated enemy of eons and destroy them? The only reason she could see was that he still cared for them and was working with them to destroy Yoshihiro's forces from within. That had to be the reason behind International Rescue as well, she was sure.

A noise made Umiko turn just in time to see one of Ranma's Lieutenants enter the bridge. Sakaki stopped dead and looked around blankly when she saw the blood decorating the room, then froze her gaze on Umiko.

Before Sakaki could move or say anything, Umiko flickered and the Lieutenant felt a heavy blow to the side of her head. Enhanced strength saved her; even as a normal human she had been almost freakishly strong, and as a monster her strength had grown similarly. While the punch may have stove in the head of one of her friends, this merely threw her across the room and through a wall. She pulled herself to her feet silently, a determined set to her mouth and the same steady gaze locked on the General. Umiko flickered again, and while Sakaki blocked the first punch, she was unprepared and wide open for the kick that scythed in around her ribs.

This time she was knocked back through three walls before crashing out through an exterior bulkhead and bouncing off the wall of the cavern where the battleship rested. She dropped towards the ground, but Umiko was faster, flickering into existence in time to deliver another punishing blow. Sakaki got a punch in, followed by a second that was easily blocked and resulted in both fists being caught. Umiko flickered around, faster than the eye could clearly see, and the bones of Sakaki's forearms shattered into gravel. The Lieutenant's gasp of pain was short-lived, as Umiko flipped over and delivered a kick to Sakaki's stomach that flattened her into the cavern floor.

Something moved in the resulting crater, and rather than allowing Sakaki to recover and return another ineffectual blow, Umiko flickered into the crater and appeared, one of Sakaki's forearms in each hand. She gave the younger woman a savage smile before ripping Sakaki's left arm off.

Now Sakaki screamed, which doubled in intensity a moment later as her right arm joined the left on the ground behind Umiko.

There was a presence, and Umiko was aware Ayumu was there behind her. As she turned to see the girl frowning at her, two other of Ranma's Lieutenants flickered in and grabbed Sakaki. "Take her to Ranma," Ayumu said quietly. "And tell him."

"Shouldn't that be you?" Koyomi asked.

"No. Takino, make sure she goes."

"Right-o~" saluted the other monster, and the group of three monsters vanished, leaving Umiko alone with Ayumu. Neither noticed the crowd slowly growing.

"I'm going to enjoy this," Umiko snarled, working herself back up in preparation for the next fight. Her blood was already up; Umiko's teeth had twisted into fangs, with fur and scales vying for domination across her shoulders and neck.

"This isn't what the Master wants," Ayumu said, but Umiko cut her off.

"What would you know about what the Master wants?" she yelled back. "I am his right hand! I am his finest instrument! I wield his word!" Umiko stretched and rolled her shoulders as they doubled in width, along with her chest. Muscles in her legs felt like they were being freed from captivity as they bulked up. A twinge of pain and her ears jutted upwards. An illusion of a ripple of water crossed her vision and her eyes had grown slitted and yellow. It had been so long since she had allowed herself to feel the full strength of her power.

To her credit, Ayumu didn't blink. She had a determined expression on her face, looking angry, and yet at the same time completely unconcerned with Umiko's transformation.

"You should watch yourself!" Umiko bellowed.

Ayumu shook her head sadly. "I don't need to watch myself. But you should."

Without warning, Umiko leapt forward and pounded a massive fist into Ayumu's face. The smaller Lieutenant was caught off-guard and rocketed backwards, to be caught in a mighty paw and thrown at a cavern wall. Ayumu bounced off that and twisted, spinning to plant her feet on the ground. Umiko knew there was something about her that wasn't right, and wasn't about to let the younger woman get her bearings, pummelling her with a flurry of punches. The Lieutenant held her ground for a few moments, then fell to a knee while holding her forearms braced in a cross above her head.

_Victory._

A hand caught Umiko's paw before she could deliver a final blow, halting her attack and swinging her around with the reversed force. _Ranma._

Ranma frowned at her. "What are you doing with my people?"

On a roll, Umiko continued her motion and flicked her other hand up with claws extended. Had Ranma been a normal human, he would have been filleted. As it was, the front of his jacket was torn into slices, but her claws glanced off his skin – Umiko hadn't intended this to be a killing blow, oh no, he had to tell her what his plan was first, but it was enough for him to release his grip on her forearm and let Umiko move into a proper attack.

Four limbs came up as she pounced like a cat, but Ranma side-stepped and slapped her away. Good, he wasn't treating her seriously yet. Umiko could work with that. She spin on one heel and brought her other up, claws bursting from her feet as they raked at him. Sharp enough, with enough energy in them to graze Ranma's blocking arm. He frowned, but Umiko suspected not at the injury; indeed, he barely seemed to feel it. She pulled both arms back in warning, and hissed at him.

That was it; Ranma blanched, and with a flicker of motion both he and Ayumu had vanished.

_It's time._

Umiko moved after them, various monsters leaving their assigned tasks and trailing in her wake – something was going on, something big.

But Ranma was gone. Umiko was patient, though. Like the cat she partially resembled, she would hunt the other General down, and dispose of him as she had Baku the first time around.

* * *

Ranma dropped back into the world far from Umiko in a cold sweat. She had been awfully cat-like. More so than he'd seen her in a long time, and even humanoid and out for his blood he had felt the stirrings of his own response to the threat before him. He'd had moments to get clear, had grabbed Ayumu and run. Now, hidden with the others arriving piecemeal, Ranma lowered Ayumu to the ground. "Are you okay?"

Ayumu nodded, her face one of concern. "I've never seen you run from a fight before," she said wonderingly.

"Sometimes, you gotta go while the going's good," Ranma evaded, recalling his father's first rule of martial arts. He looked to Takino, who stood over Sakaki's prone form. "Is she okay?" Takino shook her head mournfully. "Is she dead?" Ranma pressed. Again, Takino shook her head.

"But it probably won't be long," she said, subdued.

Ranma made a decision, and reached into a pocket to pull a piece of paper free. He handed it to Takino. "Take her to this place in Kanagawa. Tell them I said to help her. Tell them... tell them she likes _cats._"

Interesting stress, Ayumu noted. Interesting subdued shudder as well. She watched Takino take Sakaki and vanish, and Ranma turned to Koyomi. "Gather everyone. Tell them to watch out. I think Umiko's finally flipped."

Ayumu reached out with a surprisingly steady arm to take Ranma's wrist in her hand. "She had flipped a long time ago. This was always going to happen. This is what she did to Baku a long time ago."

Ranma shook his head then paused. "Natsumi? Where is she?"

Mihama spoke up from the nearest pipe entrance, where she kept an eye on any oncoming threats. "Sakaki said Umiko had gotten her." Her twin ponytails bounced in emphatic agreement, their voices adding to a low chorus of agreement through the small chamber.

"No..." Ranma stood, pointing to Mihama. "Look after Ayumu here. I've got to get Natsumi outta here." Ayumu refused to release Ranma's wrist, climbing to her feet after him and following the few steps he took forward. He glanced back.

"Take Mihama. You may need her."

Ranma's eyes narrowed at Ayumu's insistence. No matter, her cover was blown. After what she had just been through, she couldn't play the idiot anymore, any more than the others could. There was a time coming that Ranma had to understand what was happening, what was going on, but that time wasn't quite yet. As long as his troops were in danger, he would be distracted and wouldn't be able to focus on what she had to tell him. And, as long as Baku remained within Umiko's grasp, he could never rest. This she knew without needing to be told. It was one of the reasons the Master had assigned her to Ranma's side.

Ranma nodded once and flickered from view. Mihama followed. Finally, Ayumu allowed herself to slump to the ground and relax, gathering her strength for what was to come.

* * *

Ranma flickered back into existence on the salvaged warship's bridge, and immediately stepped back at the sight of the blood on the walls, consoles, monitors, floors, even the ceiling held splatters of congealing liquid. Natsumi's wounds had not yet healed, blood still welling in the cuts and bruises purpling across her exposed skin. Yet, she said nothing, gave no reaction. Ranma's rapid check of the environment revealed her shattered VR helmet, lying some distance from her broken body. He pointed at it wordlessly, and Mihama flickered into view to pick it up. She cradled it to her small body as she turned to look at Ranma as he crouched down to take Natsumi's hand almost tenderly.

Then, it was almost as if they were both somewhere else –

* * *

It was sunset on the beach when Ranma looked around, the oblate globe of the sun melting out into the clouds and horizon. There was no one on this beautiful beach – warm golden sand, a few trees, grass and rocks leading away behind him and gentle waves of water further down.

He wasn't sure when he first became aware of someone sitting on the beach, but he walked to the figure, and sat beside her.

Natsumi watched the setting sun with a wistful look on her face, no visor or helmet to be seen.

"Where are we?" Ranma asked.

"Where I grew up," Natsumi replied. "My family's island." The sun sank a little lower in the sky, almost kissing the horizon now. "I felt I should be here at the end."

Ranma shook his head. "You're not gonna die here, not today."

"Everything dies sometime, Ranma." Natsumi's eyes continued to stay locked on the setting sun. "I've done my part in this war. I fought and I fought and I fought, and what for? I've been used, used and abused. And now..."

"I owe you my gratitude. And more," Ranma reminded her. "For the island. For Battle Royale. Covering for me. For everything."

Her eyes glistened. "And at the end, you remind me of everything I failed at."

"You haven't failed at anything!"

"No, but I have." She sniffed, and rubbed at her eyes with her forearm. "I failed you. I failed Kaname. I failed Sakaki. I tried to save them, I really did."

"I know," Ranma replied, reaching out hesitantly and wrapping his arm around the young girl's shoulders, pulling her close. She rested her head on his chest, watching the sun sink down. "And you didn't fail. Failing means you gave up. It means you didn't try again. And I know you've been trying, so very hard. I know. I see all the little reports. I see the monitors flash on and off and I know you've run interference between us and Umiko."

"I can't do that anymore," Natsumi admitted. "My time is just about over."

"No, it's really not," Ranma answered, determined to make Natsumi hear the steel in his voice. "You're not gonna die. Not here, not today."

Natsumi pulled away from Ranma, got to her feet and ran lightly to the water's edge, giggling childishly as she splashed in the warm tropical waters. He watched her, and eventually she stopped and looked back out to sea. "Everyone dies," she repeated. "But you've forgotten the nature of power. If I can impart one thing to you, _only one_, it's that the power you are playing with is not the sort to be taken lightly."

"I know that," Ranma said, getting to his feet and dusting the sand off the back of his pants as he joined her at the water's edge.

"No," she continued, "you don't. You think you know about how the power corrupts you, and yet you still think the best way to win a war is by fighting it."

"There's no other way to win a war," Ranma countered. He frowned. Was there? He'd been raised to fight, fight for himself and those closest to him, to get what he wanted as well as get by in life. Selfish reasons to fight. He had grown as a man to fight for the honour and integrity of others, but still had his childish, selfish streak and let himself be led into fights for the wrong reasons, but he thought he was beyond that now. For some reason, the image of Hotaru flashed into his mind.

"There is," Natsumi said sadly. She looked down and tangled her fingers in Ranma's before looking up. "I thought I would have such a beautiful life. I thought I would breeze through school, get a great job and make lots of money, then marry the love of my life and we would have beautiful crazy adventures together for the rest of our lives." She looked back out to sea, where the sun had almost slipped beneath the waves. "But that won't happen now."

Ranma shook his head definitively. "You're not dying. I'll take you to someone for help."

"Hotaru? She was nice. Very guarded around me, but understandably so." She paused, then placed a hand on Ranma's chest. "But you have to let me go."

"What point is the power of a god if I can't save the people closest to me?"

"I killed people."

"That other side of you killed people. And so you pay for that with the rest of your life. Dedicate yourself to redeeming yourself and work to make up for those losses. It sounds easy, but the easy way out is letting yourself die and not dealing with the consequences."

"Why do you believe I can be redeemed?"

Ranma thought of Usagi and her friends, people he thought of as very close to him. Yes, even Usagi, the idiot who complained about him, argued about him, probably hated him right now but that he knew deep down loved and appreciated him and what he did for her friends. Deep in his chest, he felt an indescribable sadness. "I have to believe it can be done."

Natsumi turned her gaze to his again, and held it for long moments. Then, just before the sun winked out completely, she nodded, and time sped up again.

* * *

Ranma grabbed Mihama's hand and held it tight to Natsumi's. He glared up at his very junior Lieutenant. "Take her where Takino took Sakaki. Hotaru will know what to do."

Behind him, Ranma felt a presence flicker into being as a humanised Umiko teleported into the command centre. "Oh," she said as Mihama disappeared. "Here you are. At the source of all the problems in this world." She threw a contemptuous glance at where Natsumi had recently lain.

Ranma pulled himself to his feet, feeling loose and disconnected. "Why? Why are you doing this? We both work for Yoshihiro! We're both working –"

"_I _work for the Master! I care for him! I look after his _every_ need."

"Uh..." Ranma scratched the back of his head, turning his face slightly away from Umiko but keeping her within his field of vision. "Are you insecure or something?"

Umiko pulled back in surprise, a hand fluttering to her chest. "Me? Insecure? Why ever do you think that?"

"It's just you really seem to be worked up over this whole you 'n Yoshihiro thing and –"

"He is _The Master_!"

"And I know you and Yoshihiro had the whole thing going when he was young, but that time's long past, and he can make his own mind up about stuff now," Ranma continued as if Umiko hadn't interrupted him. He was reminded of the times he'd seen Yoshihiro agonising over basic decisions, but decided not to bring that up. All he was doing was delaying Umiko from following his troops, buying them time. And while his father had trained him that running away until you could regroup and prepare a proper response was the first thing a Saotome should do, this one time he'd have to ignore his father's meagre teachings and stand his ground.

He already knew Umiko was stronger than he could reach at the moment without transforming into Sailor Ceres and using that as a basis to further charge his batteries, but he'd fought Sailor Saturn to a standstill unenhanced, so he knew if he pulled out all his barriers, all his stops, he would probably just pull up short of Umiko's power level, and the rest he could make up through pure skill and speed.

"Anyone'd think you're insecure. All the cool monsters think so."

Umiko's eyes narrowed in annoyance, and she hissed at him. He flinched as she growled back at him. "I am _not_ insecure. I am _not_ in the habit of trying to please the Master, _I just do._"

"Ooooh," Ranma nodded his understanding. "Sorry, I was wrong. You want to _replace_ him."

She blinked in surprise. Did she? No, Ranma was just trying to confuse her. She rolled her head to one side, hearing her neck pop, then back the other way, stretching before fighting. "There will be no more lies from your mouth. There will be no more obstructions from you. This day will see you dead, and the Master's plans will continue unhindered."

"How do you speak so clearly through all those sharp teeth?" Ranma asked, leaning forward for a better look. She snapped her jaws at him, and he stood back up. "Huh. It's like you're just so weird. I don't know how ya work at all. You're a lizard cat? Is that right? Like long strolls on the kitty litter tray? Can't say I've seen you in the sun, though. Do you bask in front of the fusion furnace, then?"

Umiko flexed her fingers, and massive claws burst forth. "Keep speaking, traitor, and I'll fillet you slowly instead of quick."

"Why do you call me a traitor when I'm the one doing what the Master wants," Ranma asked, "and you keep trying to sabotage those activities?"

"Whatever you think, you are not one of us," Umiko spat at him. "You are one of _them_. I can smell the senshi stench on you. You see them when you are not here. You fight for them. You ruin our chances of taking this world!"

"I'm not trying to do any of that," Ranma pointed out. "I am trying ta end this stupid war by making you all live in peace." And that would involve talking, he realised. The image of Hotaru he'd had earlier came to him again. Of course, he was a stupid idiot. Sometimes, talking was all it took. And once people had talked, they could move on like adults.

"There will be peace – when the Dark Kingdom rules all that exists in this realm!"

"Listen to ya! And you're not even from the Dark Kingdom."

Umiko transformed in an instant and sprang for Ranma to shut him up. He managed to dodge to the side, although her claws caught part of his torn uniform and ripped it further across his chest. A flap hung down when he stopped, and he pulled the jacket and shirt off to stop it from interfering.

He hadn't been expecting Umiko to move at him that fast; he'd thought they'd go around a few more times. He hadn't yet managed to gather all the power he'd need to fight with.

"You think I'm stupid?" Umiko hissed at him as she spun around and readied to leap again. "I can feel you drawing power to yourself. I can feel you ready to make the first attack! I will not let you."

Ranma shook his head. "Believe me, I don't wanna do this, but the way you're talking it was looking like it would happen anyway." He closed his hands into fists, sinking power into them as she leapt at him. He anchored himself to the decking through his feet, and began punching with the force of a pile driver as she hit him. He wasn't knocked back but felt the air rush backwards from him from the force of her movement into him and the impact his fists had on her chest. Umiki gave as little ground as he did, and after a few moments punching each other in a vacuum, they each leapt backwards to take a breath and start again. Their punches sang out like bells.

Umiko charged her fist and sent it sailing through Ranma's defences. He cursed as he took the punch on the jaw, throwing him backwards out the wall behind him. He tumbled through the air to hit the rock wall opposite the grounded starship and dropped to the ground far below. Ranma pulled himself to his feet and shook the pain off as best he could before Umiko could reach him. She wasn't slipping through space, he noted, but was instead drifting through the air towards him with an arrogant smirk on her face. Shock value, he realised, trying to psyche him out and encourage any monsters watching to lose faith in him. He wasn't going to be able to speak through his jaw for a few minutes, but focussed his power to act as if his body were whole and uninjured – that would begin an aggressive healing throughout his body, if he did take injury.

Her feet touched the ground, and she paused before springing towards him, mouth and eyes wide open in expectant delight. Ranma brought his arms up and blocked her initial pounce, rolling over onto his back as her momentum continued drawing her forward, and planted a foot in her gut to help her on her way. She looked surprised before she hit the wall, the additional force provided by Ranma burying her half into it. Rock exploded away as she charged her body and came at him again.

He felt light in his head at the sight of her – fully transformed, she looked like nothing more than a giant cat.

Certainly larger than any tiger.

But he had to keep it together. Even using the Cat Fist technique wasn't guaranteed to get him out of this spot, he needed his wits about him to flee when the moment was right. He was aware of the presences of his lieutenants flickering in and out around the base – so far Umiko hadn't seemed to notice. She came at him again, claws outstretched, teeth on the tip of her tail gnashing and snapping to get hold of him. Ranma managed to twist to the side, but one of her back feet raked his side.

Lieutenants still gathering troops and supplies. Jumping in and out of the base. Ranma's head still spun when he caught sight of Umiko, and he could feel a sensation in his head similar to the tearing of clothing. He fought it back down, leaving himself open to another wild blow that pummelled him back into the wall. From there, he dropped to the ground.

Ranma pushed himself up out of the small crater he'd dug upon impact. Umiko dropped to the ground before him, rising up onto two legs. Her knees clicked as they regained their normal orientation before stalking forward with a low hiss.

The impact to his head had seemed to clear it, and Ranma powered forward, pushing backwards with all the energy he had. He flew into her stomach like a missile, breath erupting from Umiko's mouth as he winded her. From there, he planted his hands in the floor, and used his momentum to flip over, delivering a double-kick to Umiko's gut. She bounced backwards into one of the unfinished Terrorhawks.

With a groan of stressed metal, Umiko pushed her way back into the cavern. As she dropped to the ground, the Terrorhawk shuddered again. Ranma saw the eyes, mighty windows surrounding the upper structure, light up as the machine woke. "Awww no!" He changed his attention from Umiko to the Cybrid defence platform that powered the mighty vehicle, intending to punch through its braincase and disable it but the Terrorhawk blinked and was gone.

Around the massive hangar, monsters put down tools as the other Terrorhawks came online, beginning abbreviated start-up sequences and launching to reality from this pocket dimension. The last to leave lifted from its rest just under the hyperengines of the Night's Pride, the massive Dark Kingdom warship that had been cannibalised to build the base.

The warship whose engines were the only thing keeping the base isolated in otherdimensional space.

The partially-completed Terrorhawk – NightHawk, Ranma realised in a distant part of his mind – kept rising, tearing through the armoured housing of the engines. Space groaned as the energies holding it apart from reality began to shift and warp. Cracks spread out through the base, packets of unreality bleeding through. Monsters caught unprepared were sucked into never existing.

Throughout the base, Ranma felt the subtle shifting of power as the hierarchy slipgated out to fallback positions. Yoshihiro's presence held on for a moment longer, then flickered from Ranma's sense.

A moment after the Master had vanished, Umiko lifted her head, aware something was going terribly wrong. Ranma threw her a two-fingered salute as he felt the last of his troops vanish from the base, and then he was gone as well.

Umiko howled in anger and frustration as the base collapsed around her.

* * *

Ranma dropped to the ground on the outskirts of Tokyo. Well, that could have gone better.

He could have travelled to see the senshi, but right now he suspected he was not their favourite person. As Mihama and Takino dropped back in around him, he noticed Ayumu watching from a nearby bench in a bus shelter.

"You said Umiko had done this before, when she attacked Natsumi the first time," Ranma called out as he walked towards her. She nodded. "Except the first time was at Yoshihiro's orders, wasn't it?"

"The Master is incapable of making decisions that powerful," Mihama said from behind Ranma. He turned.

"I know he has trouble making big decisions –"

"He cannot make decisions," Mihama repeated.

"I've seen him. He's indecisive. He doesn't know which is the best decision to make, so he can't make any."

Mihama shook her head. "You don't understand. The Master _cannot_ make decisions. He is too young. He merely parrots what his mother says to him."

Ranma stared. He turned back to face Ayumu, who nodded.

"The mother makes his decisions. Everything he does, everything he says, she controls, she manipulates. It might look otherwise but he does not know how to do anything."

Hotaru. The attacks. Rozen's dolls. Natsumi. Tokyo. Kaname. Was this all something set off by Umiko? "I can't believe that. He has to have some say –"

"Ranma," Takino interrupted. "He's a _baby_."

"I know he's young – we saw him early on – but –"

Takino shook her head. "He's really a baby. He was a newborn the day he was changed."

"The day the hospital was destroyed..."

"The _reason_ the hospital was destroyed. He changed Umiko as he was born."

Ranma stared. "I knew she was the first of his monsters, but..."

"She was his nurse. Taking him to the morgue. She thought he was dead, but he was changing and he killed her and then brought her back."

"Umiko kind of went crazy," Ayumu added.

"Umiko was always kind of crazy," Mihama offered. "And now she's in control of everything, all the time."

"Then why was _I_ there?"

"The Master did make _one_ choice," Ayumu offered.

"Me," Ranma realised. A chance to make a choice of his own. A chance to have someone else show him ways things could be done. "He wanted to know another way."

The three girls looked at one another uneasily. "Not quite," Mihama said after a few moments.

"Not at all," Takino offered.

"We think he wanted a father," Ayumu concluded.

* * *

At the Ai Sou, the senshi feverishly worked to drag wounded monsters inside from the front steps where they had been left. One of the girls had been handed over with the cryptic comment that "she likes cats," but otherwise monsters had dropped in, handed over the wounded, and gone again.

"They know where we live!" Usagi yelled at the top of her lungs.

"I think it's Ranma," Hotaru said quietly, where she worked on healing Natsumi as best she could. The younger girl was unconscious and heavily injured. "They should see a hospital."

The tall monster who liked cats grabbed at Hotaru's arm and gave a single serious shake of her head before falling back. Hotaru held her gaze for a few moments before nodding at her and returning her focus to Natsumi. Once she was sure the former Dark General was stable, she moved on to the tall monster.

Mitsuki leaned back from the television. "Everyone! Quieten down. Something's going on in Tokyo!"

Usagi and MInako followed her to the television, where a shaky news camera showed multiple of Ranma's manufactured giant monsters descending on the city. "We've got to do something," Mitsuki said.

Usagi's eyes narrowed, and she started to turn to the foyer and the injured monsters again but Mitsuki reached out and grabbed her arm. She swivelled Usagi back to face her directly. "We have to _do something_," she repeated.

"Okay, okay," Usagi sighed. "But do we have giant robots yet?"

* * *

The short answer was no.

Kaolla Su was very apologetic as she showed off the giant robots she'd produced. As requested by Hotaru, they were giant animals in the forms of an eagle, an elephant, a tiger, a rhinoceros and a kangaroo, and they could indeed move around under pilot direction independently. The problem came when they tried to combine. Kaolla set the vehicles off, and they started coming together but with a grinding noise they stopped.

"They're all too different to work together," Kaolla explained. "Now, if they were all turtles, this wouldn't have been a problem!"

Chao stood behind Hotaru, looking thoughtful as she leaned forward and whispered in the shorter senshi's ear. Hotaru listening intently before nodding. "That could also work. Kaolla, how spacious are the insides of the robots?"

* * *

A short time later, AirHawk dived for the city with talons outstretched. Looking like a giant metallic eagle, it was missing plating on its topside – but the JSSDF jets that buzzed around it over Tokyo were unable to draw a line to the target for long before it would juke to one side or the other and the moment was lost.

Additionally, it had the ability to stop and turn almost on the spot, and had downed several fighters already.

The ground forces weren't having much better luck with rampaging centipede-like GroundHawks burrowing through the CBD. Self Defence Force tanks backed up and rotated their turrets to fire, but as they stopped to line up a shot smaller man-sized monsters would swarm them and begin tearing the tank to pieces. Only a handful of shells had been fired – most had gone wide. Two crews had already been lost to the monsters, and the ground forces were having no luck bringing down the monsters with their rifles – and were unable to even gain the attention of the much larger and more armoured Terrorhawks.

Strangely, some of the monsters seemed to be fighting amongst themselves.

And so, five people stepped to the edge of a building. Something about them – their confident stance, the sun glinting off coloured uniforms, possibly the small swords they held in their hands – caused the battlefield to fall silent.

JSSDF soldiers, monsters and civilians alike stopped their fighting and running to turn and face these people.

One by one, they flipped forward, somersaulting to the ground. As they landed, they struck a pose and shouted their names for all to hear even as people took in the stylised helmets and padded lycra bodysuits.

"Venus Red!"

"Venus Black!"

"Venus Yellow!"

"Venus Blue!"

"... venus pink..."

"You have one chance to surrender!" Venus Red yelled, pointing her sword at the largest of the nearest Dark Kingdom monsters. "Only one chance! And then we shall deal with you for the cause of justice!"

The monster looked back at Venus Red blankly. "Uh... You probably want to speak with Kenji," he said, looking around. "He's kind of in charge here..."

"Only the one chance!" Venus Red said, shifting her attention to another monster, who pointed at a third.

The third looked around. "Um. I can't make that call, guys."

"They're not surrendering, Venus Red."

"I see that, Venus Yellow."

"We have to fight them."

"Who's leading this team, Venus Yellow?"

Venus Yellow rolled her head in an exaggerated motion.

"I am," Venus Pink supplied, leaning forward to look down the line, throwing her arms out wide. Venus Black slapped her glove to her face and groaned.

"If you won't surrender," Venus Red yelled, trying to speak over the others with some dignity, "then we must defeat you. Venus Five," and she stopped a moment to glare at a giggling Venus Blue, "let's go to work and wipe these monsters out."

As one, they nodded, saluted their enemy with a tap of their swords to their helmets, and the Venus Five charged into battle.

TO BE CONTINUED...

SAILOR MOON SAYS...

This one took a long time. There have been reasons, mostly RL. I am sorry, and must say that updates in the future may be sporadic. I am hoping it won't be a stupidly long time between updates as this one was! But Justice will be finished, one way or another.

Next chapter – the Venus Five strike back to save Tokyo. And the war of monsters continues.


End file.
